PETROL JESUS NIGHTMARE #5 (IN THE TIME OF THE MESSIAH). To 27 August.

Edinburgh

PETROL JESUS NIGHTMARE #5 (IN THE TIME OF THE MESSIAH)
by Henry Adam

Traverse 1 To 27 August 2006
Tue-Sun various times
Runs 2hr 30min One interval

TICKETS: 013 228 1404
www.traverse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 16 August

Dynamite in the situation but dynamics lacking in the play.
A few years ago Henry Adam provided a Festival Traverse delight with The People Next Door. There he wrote about wider issues through characters who came alive. In his latest play, for this year’s Festival, there are important issues but there the resemblance ends.

Petrol Jesus is set in a bombed-out building in the Arab/Israeli conflict; Soutra Gilmour’s design gives a sense of depth and of destruction continuing beyond the action’s focus. Two Israeli soldiers keep firing and are fired upon. A superior comes bringing a confident-talking Texan, someone between a fact-finder and a tourist, plus a rabbi’s widow (the least-integrated character).

Problems start with the pretentious title (who were Petrol Jesuses 1-4?). Adam has no time for Messiahs anyway. The character with the most overt religious-political convictions (naturally enough, the one who only visits the fighting briefly) ends up in a form of crucifixion. Yet this process, involving posts and ties standing ready from the start, with no explanation as to what they are doing there, seems present only to justify the title.

And, yes, petrol’s involved too, just as some of the more upfront seventies political plays made for a tense conclusion with people and places being soaked and set alight. That was before there were so many cases of immolation and auto-immolation in the world, and it now needs more explanation than it receives here.

Though he gives his American something that seems like courage, it may be intended only as bullish supremacy. America and Christian fundamentalism are blamed for conflict, as always, but that blame is assumed rather than argued, leading to oversimplification just when convincing argument’s vital – let’s all sleep easy in our liberal beds; we know who’s to blame.

Despite its urgent setting, its fine cast and director, the play remains static. The sense of a playwright and his themes never vanishes. It takes all the production skills to keep shoving it reluctantly forward. Watching it’s like pushing a sledge over a deep-piled carpet. The characters all seem there to say things the playwright wants said. Which is not how things should be.

Slomo: James Cunningham
Texan: Lewis Howden
Buddy: Aleksandar Mikic
Yossariat: Joseph Thompson
Rabbi’s Wife: Susan Vidler

Director: Philip Howard
Designer: Soutra Gilmour
Lighting: Charles Balfour
Sound: Graham Sutherland

2006-08-23 09:38:03