The Gospel According to Jesus Queen of Heaven

Jesus is a woman – we are told.  Jesus always was a woman.  Why not?  It makes sense.  It makes better sense – and this show will convince you.  Jesus is here to reveal that she is a woman and what that means – and to find, reveal, reinterpret and contradict Christian dogma, beliefs, myths and stories.  ‘The world is changing’ is the optimistic mantra.  That is the conclusion and the meaning of the monologue that makes up this show.  It takes the form of a sermon.  Or if you like, an anti-sermon because it is a sermon such as you have not heard before. 

Stately, dignified Kristen Smyth is Jesus – a different or a revealed Jesus whom she tells us was there all the time – and here a figure of great presence, in flowing pale blue velvet cape and spangled frock, sleeve tattoos both arms, speaking with an arresting, beautifully modulated voice that (almost) persuades us that everything she says is true.  Or if not true, then possible.  Instead of the punishing, excluding, guilt making Christianity, here that’s replaced with a bold and provocative queer aesthetic.  Why?  Not mere assertion, but a revelation of goodness in all people when they are free to be themselves, free of guilt, free of fear, free of stereotyping and rigid roles.

Kitan Petkovski’s direction is focussed and restrained so that nothing gets in the way of the words.  Bethany J Fellows’ design, in its stark simplicity, feels to be exactly the correct setting.  Jesus walks on a rectangle of grass, turning to address the audience on four sides, on each of which sits a choir member, all in white.  The show relies very much on Christian liturgy and Bible stories, enhanced by the choir’s singing.  Their soaring choral music wraps around Jesus’ words and makes them ‘holy’ in a familiar way, as if indeed we are in a church – even though, if you listen closely to choir’s words, they have the same subversive, iconoclastic import.  

Those brought up in – or brainwashed by – ‘the faith’ with its standard Christian beliefs may find Jesus Queen of Heaven offensive, even blasphemous – although I could detect no outrage in our audience.  Speaking as an atheist, Jesus’ words can reach any humanist.  In her way, Jesus is gently asking us to speculate about the human heart and soul, and like John Lennon’s song imagine a better, simpler world. 

She takes familiar Bible stories – like the Annunciation, the wedding at Canaan, the prodigal son (but here a daughter thrown out when she reveals her sexuality), the woman taken in adultery, the woman at the well, the Crucifixion – but Jesus does not do anything so simple as turn those stories on their head: she finds new meaning within the stories.  At the wedding, the water tastes like wine because the wedding guests discover the goodness in the water.  Jesus sincerely hopes her parents had great sexual pleasure when they conceived her – because pleasure is good and holy and what was made was good and holy.  Jesus did not expiate our sins on the cross.  Only we can expiate our sins by admitting them and blessing those who hate us.

There are echoes here – deliberately or not - in Jo Clifford’s text of other thinkers.  James Baldwin on why people cling to their hate.  Camus on finding unquenchable summer in his soul in the depths of winter – that is, in despair.  There are also times when the text veers toward cliché but that is only because such idealistic ideas come from a place of yearning for acceptance and freedom – for that changed world - and here told with such persuasive simplicity that they are irresistible.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Daniel Rabin