THE PLAY ABOUT A TRIAL ULTIMATELY BECOMES A TRIAL TO WATCH
Stephen Adley Guirgis’ The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a courtroom drama set in Purgatory where the guilty or not guilty verdict literally means heaven or hell for the one standing trial. The one being judged in this case is former apostle and betrayer 
of Jesus, Judas Iscariot. The testifying witnesses include fellow apostles, saints, Mother Theresa, Sigmund Freud, Caiaphas the High Priest, Pontius Pilate, Judas’ mother, and of course, Satan. First directed by Philip Seymour Hoffman at the Public Theater in 2005, the play is an Artistic Director’s dream come true: A simultaneously incendiary and thought-provoking work that skirts the line of irreverence with boisterous barbs and humor to satisfy the well-read historicist and theologian. However, Last Days, filled with both laugh-out-loud and groan-worthy humor, is an ambitious, tedious and overstuffed ramble littered with propaganda. With a taxing three-hour run time, its potential for poignancy is lost within a lugubrious monologue-to-monologue structure. It has been eight years since Last Days premiered; it is no longer a fresh play with potential, but a problematic play that continues to languish in dramaturgical purgatory.
Director Patrick Riviere tackles Last Days at The Victory Theatre in Burbank with a nimble, lively ensemble of fourteen (often double cast in roles) of which he is also a 
member. The conflicted nature of Caiaphas – mediator and leader for the Jewish people – is elucidated by Riviere’s sharp performance; his time on the stand serves as one of the play’s best-realized sequences. Other notables include Faith Imafidon as the brash and crass Saint Monica who pleads on Judas’ behalf to receive a trial; Paul Nieman as a stuffy and flowery Sigmund Freud who asserts Judas was insane for wanting to kill himself; and the bitter and brittle Sharon Freedman as the precocious yet skeptical defense attorney Fabiana Aziza Cunningham. In contrast, Cooper Daniels’ torpid turn as Jesus flattens the impact of his crucial late appearance. Riviere maintains the inconsistency of this piece by accentuating both its peaks and valleys: The funny moments are very funny, but slow-moving sequences are stretched to interminable length.
Guirgis recently received the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for writing “dramatic dialogue with passion and humor, creating characters who live on the edge, and whose linguistic bravado reinvigorates the American vernacular.” And indeed the characters here are edgy, passionate, and articulate. But for every insightful moment of enlightenment in Last Days, there are frustratingly underwritten and preachy opinions with little substance that don’t move the story forward and serve merely as Guirgis’ megaphone for his agenda, such as the two sound-bite opinions on the controversy of abortion in this spiritual place of Purgatory.
The potential of this play and its ideas debating remorse and grace are greater than watching the trial unfold.
photos by Jeff Xander
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
The Victory Theatre (Big Theatre) in Burbank
scheduled to end on April 6, 2013
for tickets, call 800.838.3006 or visit Brown Paper Tickets