October 06, 2005

JIMMY CHRIST
the Space Theatre

Reviewed By Travis Michael Holder
Things aren't easy in the Christ household: Elder son Jesus is a better
carpenter than his father, second son Jimmy lives in the constant shadow of
his brother's grandstanding "look-at-me" sunbeam climbs and leper cures, and
then there's that sticky Son-of-God business. "The kid's obviously half-
gentile," is the frustrated mantra of Joseph (Ronald Quigley), who believes
Jesus' dad was really a passing Roman, but Mary (Jessica Blair) counters
with, "How about walking on water? Can Romans do that?"

A wonderfully clever humor energizes Nicholas Monohan's play, immediately
picked up in two exceptional performances by Jonah Wanicur as the title
character and Trevor Parsons as his future-challenged surfer-dude redeemer
brother who's unsure if his personal oracle told him to "go east" or "go
eat." Parsons, whose Jesus looks and sounds a bit like an early Nordic Keanu
Reeves, is a master of the deadpan while tossing away Monohan's paraphrased
biblical gems, wholly comfortable with lines such as, "Hey, I want to try out
a new parable on you guys if that's cool with you," then following
with, "There's no use cryin' over spilt milk," which he proudly admits he
thought up in a trance. The rubber-faced, earnestly tormented Wanicur is the
perfect foil as the underachieving brother, especially hilarious when Jesusa
big hit with the ladies of Galileesets them both up on a messy double date
with the Cohen sisters.

Under the generally able direction of Alex Solwho lets his resident savior-in-
training meander a bit whenever he utters his allegoriesthis is a delightful
little no-frills production, but the script definitely needs trimming. The
fun settles into repetition and preachiness in Act Two, suddenly turning the
farcical nature of the piece into something with a gratuitous free-to-be-you-
and-me moral to be gleaned, as though Monohan was unsure how else to wrap
things up. There are also several unnecessary peripheral charactersespecially
an out-of-control and unintentionally unintelligible Alim Kouliev as the
sisters' father and one campy Samaritan who's obviously always wanted to play
a queenleaving the impression these roles were an afterthought to be sure
more members of the Dreamhouse Ensemble had a chance to appear onstage. Snip
this all down into a less-rambling intermissionless 80 minutes, and
Dreamhouse's dreams could come true.