JESUS: No Ordinary Life

by

(3 ½ stars)

Review by Kieran Eaton

This Lockwood Productions show, directed and written by Damon Lockwood has a great Blue Room Theatre vibe to it. Opening with Big Hoo Ha performers Shane Adamczak, Andrea Gibbs and Nick Pages-Oliver and has a strong comedic feel to it, right from the get-go! It’s like a sketch comedy except with flow and an actual story line.

As it is performed by experienced improvisational actors, it has a very natural feel to the play, even though it is a scripted performance. What impressed me is that all the actors give energetic performances that breathe life into their characters. These six actors all wear black so they can all perform as different characters during the show.

The real Jesus is played by Shane Adamzack, who displays realistic qualities of how Jesus would feel if he was seen as a desperate, weird, young man. This suits the actor who plays a quite geeky version of the prophet, with good effect. Another good performer is Andrea Gibbs, who plays Mary dating God on the side. Joseph, played by Nick Pages-Oliver takes the role of a sexually frustrated step dad in an amusing style of a loser dag of a husband, who naturally feels a bit inferior to Jesus’s real dad. The drop-dead-Dad of god himself is Damon Lockwood on a booming microphone in the background.

The other actors are characters trying to sell an idea of a movie that is bigger than any god and it happens to be Jesus, though Jesus himself is unable to get the role, however the actor then takes it on and starts seeing himself as a prophet. However the fame from the movie can only actually get the actor cheesy commercial roles!

This theatre show takes the absurdity of religion (even the ritual of crackers being the body of Christ) and makes the performance an interesting way of looking at Christianity. I recommend this production to be watched by anybody with an open mind to religion and theatre.

JESUS: No Ordinary Life is playing at the Blue Room Theatre in Perth from the 16th June – 4th July.