Space For God

Paul's Review of "Paul"

Posted: 14/05/2007


“Paul”
By Howard Benton

Belvoir St Theatre 28 April – 3 June 2007

“Paul” is one of those plays guaranteed to upset the more extreme fringes of the church.  The play tells the story of Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus and subsequent mission to spread the Gospel throughout the Roman Empire, and is billed as a “radical backroom account of the birth of Christianity”. For “radical”, of course, read “unorthodox” or, to be blunt, “completely wrong.” The story line is one of those whacky conspiracy theories in the vein of the Da Vinci Code. Mary is the wife of Jesus, who survived the crucifixition and lived secretly with his brother James. Jesus then plays something of a practical joke on Paul who, encountering Jesus while having an epileptic fit, misinterprets events to basically “invent” the Christian doctrine as we know it. As I said, the sort of thing that drives Evangelicals batty.

As the director notes, however, the play is not necessarily about the validity of the Bible story per se, but an exploration of the power of faith. The strength of Paul’s faith, even if that faith is based on falsehood, carries him and those around him to great truths – in the writer’s words “He was profoundly wrong but also mysteriously right.”

On this level, “Paul” succeeds is illuminating questions of doubt and faith, and the power of personality. The play very well written, and Mary in particular has some great lines. The contexturalisation of the set, based on the situation in current middle-east, is well done, and the sense of impending apocalypse present among the early church is nicely conveyed, with Paul’s sincere conviction that Jesus was going to return at any minute driving almost everything he does. This is somewhat spoilt, however, by the scene with Nero, who plays a post-modern Western rational sceptic (possibly articulating the author’s views), something that was unimaginable in 1st century Rome.

Historical revisionism aside, the play has some other negatives, mostly to do with the portrayal of Paul himself. Paul is played as a slightly nervous, unhinged character, a fanatic who seems to draw no comfort or peace from his faith. We are constantly asked to believe that his personal magnetism is so strong it convinces even some of the Apostles to believe things that they know are historically wrong, but get no sense of this from Paul himself. This is brought into stark relief by the sermon to the Corinthians on Love, supposedly the highlight of Paul’s career and one of the “greatest religious human insights in history” so admired by the playwright. The text is so completely at odds with Paul’s character that it lacks credibility, and thus loses conviction. I actually drifted off for a moment during this bit!

This is where the play fails, of course. The character of Paul as portrayed is unconvincing as the Paul who wrote Corinthians and Galatians, just as the character of Jesus “the great moral teacher” is at odds with his behaviour towards Paul, playing on the latter’s gullibility. The subsequent martyrdom in Rome of Peter (and Paul, a bit of historical silliness which we can accept for dramatic purposes) becomes an unthinkable act of futility; regardless of how thick Peter is, it is simply not believable that he would willingly die for what he knows is a lie. As an alternative thesis of the events of the New Testament, “Paul” thus succeeds only in demonstrating why such an account lacks credibility.

Paul Wagner

Got you thinking? Share your thoughts with the rest of us:

---

Name
E-mail
Your words
	Click "preview" first, then click "submit" to confirm.

---