Abraham to God: I’ll give you anything you want to prove my devotion to you. Just ask.
God to Abraham: Give me the foreskin of your penis.
Abraham to God: (stunned silence)
Abraham to God: What’s a foreskin?
God to Abraham: It’s that piece of skin attached to the end of your penis.
Abraham to God: I thought that was a man.
God to Abraham: No, that’s the other end.
Welcome to The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged). The boys from the Reduced Shakespeare Company are at it again, this time relating " the greatest story ever accepted as fact " in their trademark reductionist, deconstructionist, evening-length condensation. After supplying the sound-bite culture with theatrical digests of the plays of William Shakespeare and the complete histories of America and Western Civilization, they took on the Bible, beginning with workshop performances in 1995 at the American Repertory Theatre. The current production at Merrimack Repertory Theatre offers New Englanders their first opportunity to see the finished product.
But be forewarned: this play is not for you if you can’t take a few squirts from a Super Soaker, if you can’t read about the Virgin Birth and appreciate the unintentional humor, if you don’t think you could stand on stage as a civilian and imitate pig snorts, if you can’t stand puns like Pilate/pilot, and — most especially — if you don’t enjoy laughing continuously for two hours until you soak through all the Kleenex in your pocket with mirthful tears.
The play is set against a backdrop depicting Michelangelo’s famous fresco of humankind’s creation — Adam’s hand outstretched to touch the finger of God that extends from a disembodied Divine Arm. Three clowns in hospital scrubs — Matthew Croke, Michael John Faulkner, and Reed Martin — take on all the roles from the off-stage Voice of God to Abraham, Moses, Mary, John the Baptist, and Jesus. They play instruments, sing, perform a softshoe (in " Revelation: The Musical " ), do magic tricks, juggle, and engage in all manner of rough physical comedy.
Everything is up for laughs in a script that is elastic enough to accommodate allusions to local, topical issues. The jokes fly at a furious pace:
God to Abraham: Speaking of your children, bring me Isaac.
God to Abraham (who is about to impale a baby doll with a long sword): What do you think you’re doing?
Abraham to God: You told me to kill Isaac.
God to Abraham: I was kidding. Why do all you fundamentalists have no sense of humor?
Among the burning questions explored: were there dinosaurs on Noah’s Ark? and how do you tell apart Elijah and Elisha, John the Apostle and John the Baptist, the two Marys (one was a Madonna, one a tart)? Michael John Faulkner, playing Moses, enumerates the 10 Rejected Commandments that God eliminated at his urging. The Three Wise Men reveal that their traditional gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh are apocryphal and that in fact they all brought the Baby Jesus the same present: baseball mitts.
Although the evening is divided into two parts corresponding to the Old and New Testaments, the RSC focuses most of its hilarious attention on the Old Testament. A running gag about Noah’s Ark blooms into an extended audience-participation segment in the second half. The birth and the early life of Jesus are examined, but the events of his death and resurrection are passed over quickly. (Out of sensitivity to audiences’ feelings? Or in the realization that Monty Python’s Life of Brian has already presented the ultimate lampoon of the crucifixion?) More could, perhaps, be made of the apostles’ letters. And Revelation, cryptic as it is, gets glossed over in a song-and-dance routine. But I’m not going to quibble here. This is one of the funniest evenings I’ve spent in a theater.
Advance notice: the RSC is training its sights on the Great Books and will soon present its evening-long abridgment in The Reducers. Workshop performances of the piece will be presented at Merrimack Rep March 12 and 18. Tickets are $5.
