Bible Burlesque

Images from "Bible Burlesque" from the 29th Street Rep website

Fundamentalists Under Heavy Fire

By Julius Novick, New York Newsday, 02-25-1994

BIBLE BURLESQUE. By Bill Nave. Directed by Vera Beren. Set designed by Mark Symezak. Lighting designed by Stewart Wagner. Costumes designed by Hillary Moore. The 29th Street Repertory Theater Inc., 212 W. 29th St., Manhattan. Seen Monday.

WHAT IF SOME tele-pulpit thunderer of the religious right, inspired perhaps by the late Ayatollah Khomeni, were to encourage his followers to murder some notable blasphemer - a playwright, say, who has depicted Jesus in a homosexual relationship with Lazarus?

This is the catchy premise of "Bible Burlesque." Bill Nave's play is way over the top, and all over the place, but it is seldom dull.

The play begins with a zombified Middle American family - Dad, Mom, two kids - standing close together in stiff postures. At the Last Judgment, Dad tells us, the profane liberals in the audience will weep and wail and gnash their teeth, while "we of the unaltering faith" will laugh.

Then a young man in his underwear - who turns out to be the blaspheming playwright - goes to the door of his motel room and is shot to death - Blam! Blam! Blam! As he lies bloody on the floor, there is portentous music and light, and we see a Jesus figure in beard and blue robe, and another figure robed in white; the latter will reappear mysteriously throughout the play.

Then a woman sings, "The B-I-B-L-E, that's the book for me," doffs her red dress to reveal a swimsuit, and is joined by two other swimsuited women. As they sashay around the room, we read what is written on their sashes: "SIN IS DEATH." "HEAVEN OR HELL," "REPENT OR PERISH."

Clearly, our author has it in for Christian fundamentalists. Hardly can he allow five minutes to go by without having some hostile hypocrite brandish a Bible text against the unbelieving world. He gets off a few sharp hits, but there is something a little too easy, in an Off-Off-Broadway theater on West 29th Street, about making fun of a lot of hicks and rubes with broad accents and narrow views.

Fortunately, he has another end in view as well: to explore in earnest what led his playwright-protagonist to this motel room and this death. John D. Crabtree Jr., aka Christian Pilgrim, is a preacher's kid from Kentucky, avid for sex and fame and whatever else the wide world has to offer, but guiltily obsessed with his Christian roots. His quest is the heart of the play, and for all its preposterous melodramatic twists, it makes a lively story. A young actor named Edward Norton encompasses John D.'s transition from soft-spoken country boy to cocaine-sniffing Off-Broadway hotshot, keeping him likeable all the way.

Norton is surrounded by a good supporting cast: Peter Lewis as the nastiest Bible salesman ths side of Flannery O'Connor; Alan Arenius as the creepiest motel-owner this side of Norman Bates; Leah Posey as our hero's lesbian aunt, who paints sunflowers and loves her hunting dogs; Barbara Dworkin as the woman who takes John D. to New York; Leo Farley as an off-Broadway impresario; Paula Ewin as an investigative jounalist.

"Bible Burlesque" is rough and uneven, with blunt satire and lurid melodrama careening in and out of each other's way. But Bill Nave and his director, Vera Beren, have staged their hero's story with bold theatricality. Bursting through the excesses of "Bible Burlesque," there is invigorating life.

Julius Novick, Fundamentalists Under Heavy Fire, 02-25-1994, pp 75.

Julius Novick is a regular contributor to New York Newsday.

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