When Bad Theatre Tries To Hide Its Tracks

Comrades, I give you The Matthew Passion.

Here we have a relatively interesting idea with the Passion of Christ interspersed with the story of Matthew Shepard and the story of a middle-aged HIV+ man.

Now how do they chose to market it?

Shirtless men caked in sweat with muscles taut and bulging.

The Matthew Shepard story is not about sexiness. It's about bigotry, ignorance, and fear.

So is the Passion of the Christ.

Therefore, one must ask creator Phil Hall what his real intentions were with this piece. Did he want to make a statement or did he just want to create masturbatory fluff (no pun intended) for those too embarassed to get porn in their own homes? I do not necessarily blame Phil for all of this (although I must say that all writers must accept that they are at the nexus of their work, be it good or bad), because even if the script has descriptions last seen in Afterhours, someone had to put that image out onstage, someone had to chose that way of marketing it, and someone had to do the casting with a certain mindset.

And most embarassingly, someone--and this is most likely Phil (since this is a play with music)--had to think that adding a song called You Need A Bitch Slap was required.

I am quite tempted to say that the song would be best directed at its creator rather than one of the characters.