Edinburgh 2002

Fringe

Judas
Komedia Roman Eagle Lodge

Dolan Cummings

Just as Satan is infinitely more interesting as a character than boring old God, it is tempting to see Judas as a more complicated and interesting foil to Jesus.

Judas seems to demonstrate the opposite, though that is not a criticism of the play as such. The premise is terrific: Judas’ ego and id share a bedsit in the present day, and mull over their (his) betrayal of Jesus (or as the blurb suggests, by Jesus).

The play’s insight, and its problem, is that Judas is really not all that conflicted. In fact, it was only when I checked the programme after the play that I realised I had got the id and ego mixed up from the beginning. The id, played by Tadhg Hickey, seemed to me to be the thoughtful, controlled one: Hickey speaks and sings with a gentle Cork accent, while a brash Australian, Matthew Ween, plays the ego with a certain unpredictable and impulsive menace.

It may be simply that I have different ideas about id and ego than the playwright Helen Kavanagh Ronan: the distinction is not black and white, and it is certainly wrong to see one as superior to the other. In any case, the two aspects of Judas are hardly at loggerheads. They fight, but they also get high together, play ball games and listen to a delightfully incongruous soundtrack of contemporary American guitar pop. It is for the audience – as superego, I suppose – to make sense of this strange relationship.

A great insight comes when Judas describes a play starring Jesus as Judas, Judas as Jesus, and God as himself. Jesus was a great Judas, but Judas just couldn’t get into Jesus’ head. (God was great, but some of the audience were upset that they couldn’t see him.) Judas’ inability to understand Jesus, and his peculiar love, is at the heart of the piece. He is a rather simple character who has never got over or come to terms with his single life-defining experience. Consequently there is little drama in the piece. It is simply a portrait of a troubled mind.

Despite the lack of action or development, it is exhilarating to see a contemporary playwright taking on two such influential but unfashionable ideas as Christianity and Freudian psychoanalysis. The result is not wholly satisfying, but it is enough to justify an hour of anyone's time.

Until August 25: 22.15 (1hr 5mins)