‘It makes you realise how thin the scab over homophobia really is when it doesn’t take much to pick through it’ so said Award-Winning gay playwright Terrence McNally when religious fanatics scared the Manhattan Theater Club into cancelling the run of his play. The year was 1998 and the play was ‘Corpus Christi’ which depicted Jesus and the Apostles as gay men living in Texas in the 1950’s. It utilized modern devices like television with anachronisms like Roman occupation but what inflamed all the protesters was that Judas betrays Jesus because of sexual jealousy. Also Jesus administers gay marriage between two apostles.The vitriolic campaign of hatred back then was manufactured by people who loathed the play on principle and on what the scaremongering in the media claimed it contained. The main ringleader and the most voracious critic was William Donahue the head of The Catholic League even though cast members swear that they could see him seated in the second row snoring his way through the entire last Act.
McNally expected the play to be laid to rest after this brief run had actually put the cast and crew’s lives at risk after a barrage of threats of violence and more, yet in 2008 it had an unexpected re-birth. Out gay actor/writer Nic Arnzen was asked by his local church to stage a play for a few nights and he decided to revive ‘Corpus Christi’. Casting it mainly with actor friends, many of whom are gay, he persuaded them to take part for nothing as a favor too him. None of them had the feintest idea then that this small stage production would end up touring the World over the next few years and change all their lives forever.
This new documentary co-directed by Arnzen and James Brandon (who played the lead too) is about the ‘journey’ from the start of the church production right up to the Tour landing at a Theater in Texas where once again there were real fears for the safety of the cast after more violent threats. This fly-on-the-wall documentary mainly focuses on the positive effects that the play’s extended success has on all the people involved, and there are moments when the tearful and highly emotional testimony of some of the actors feels strangely like a confessional.
The cast includes many well-known actors such as Steve Callahan (‘Make The Yuletide Gay’) and his real life boyfriend Matthew Montgomery (‘Long Term Relationship’) plus David Pevsner (‘Old Dogs & New Tricks’), and Paul Denniston (‘Butch Camp’).
This heart-tugging documentary emphasis yet once again that these ‘devout’ Catholics (‘It is the ONLY Christian religion started by God’ someone ranted) always refuse to accept that anyone in the gay community is ‘allowed’ to have a Christian faith. Watching them behave like this yet once again, I am still surprised that any gay person would want one.
This is an interesting look at another part of recent gay history that is well worth a view.
