“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”
In “Galilee, 34” talented playwright Eleanor Burgess channels Lin-Manuel Miranda’s musical question but ups the ante from his “Hamilton” lyric to hypothesize about the origins of an even bigger historical biography, aka, “The Greatest Story Ever Told.”
This superbly written two-act play received its world premiere on South Coast Repertory’s Argyros stage this weekend.
“Galilee, 34” works as both intellectual catnip and compelling theater.
Set in Galilee, it’s a year after Jesus has been put to death.
Relatives, acolytes, the local rabbi and a couple of neighbors — and, briefly, a bedraggled passing stranger who just might be you-know-who — mingle in the scruffy backyard of a nondescript house.
They struggle to recapture what Jesus did or didn’t actually say. And make sense of what he really meant. And decide how — or whether — to communicate about him to the rest of the world.
If this sounds like some lofty lore-snore, well, have faith.
In a recent article, Burgess said she wanted to consider the surrounding figures in Jesus’ story as “… capable of jealousy, failure, doubt, grief and disagreement.”
While not to be mistaken for “The Real Housemates of Israel,” this assemblage of New Testament luminaries are dramatically reconceived as recognizable, argumentative and very mortal beings.
Ultimately, this is a humanized tale of people — marginalized by poverty and at odds with the powers-that-be – who have either directly experienced or come to know of an extraordinary person and event.
While grappling with each other, they mostly strive to achieve an understanding within themselves about what formative belief should look like.
Burgess ably conjures these fictionalized figures under a catch-all line of dialogue: “None of this happened … but I promise, all of it is true.”
What happens on the SCR stage and is inarguably true is that director Davis McCallum — based on this cohesive production he’d be welcome back anytime — marshals these events really well.
The staging never flags as McCallum establishes and maintains an assured tone throughout the events.
Especially useful are first-person monologues that break the fourth wall. Main characters speak directly to the audience, providing context for the storyline as well as communicating their feelings and frustrations.
While the narrative does trade on the audience’s recognition and familiarity with some of the figures, Burgess’ writing plays fresh and new.
(Even if you don’t know, or much care, about religion in general, or Christianity or Judaism specifically, this is still a helluva two hours of engrossing theater.)
“Galilee, 34” is well cast as an ensemble; the roles aren’t designed as star turns.
While some of the eight actors bear the weight of playing heavyweight, historical characters they all feel secure in delivering naturalistic performances.
Miriam of Nazareth (we know her as Mary… yes, that Mary) is thoughtfully developed by Amy Brenneman.
Brenneman’s Miriam is an exhausted, but defiant Jewish mother. Reverent and fiercely protective of her dead son’s memory, she is just as quick to make sure to anyone who will just listen for a minute that he practiced in his short life what she had preached to him his whole life.
Miriam’s other son, Yacov of Nazareth (hello, James the Just, sourced from one of those pesky, in-the-weeds gnostic gospels) is conveyed with stately, controlled grace by Eric Berryman.
Measured and quiet in sharing his feelings about the sibling — there are hints of competitive rivalry — Berryman’s Yacov is a figure only now coming to terms with who his stepbrother was and what he strived to accomplish.
A third character, young Saul of Tarsus (biblical spoiler alert: he became known to the world as St. Paul), is beyond frustration that he didn’t get around to meeting Jesus. He burns to believe and outfit himself with a mission, but what to do?
Raviv Ullman has a quiver of palpable intensity driving his Saul, a forceful personality grappling with how to overcome his doubts while at the same time communicating fervent belief to an unknowing world.
Not all the characters we encounter are historical superstars. A few are in place to give the main characters someone to interact with, but even these parts are well written enough to be more than just contrivances funding the plot.
Events play out in an open space, out back of the nondescript home. It’s a contemporary set design, intended to support the work’s universal themes.
Ramshackle mis-matched chairs — one has duct tape, another is a lawn chair — a plastic laundry basket near a metal clothesline, a sturdy wood picnic table… the feeling is as much a down-market neighborhood in Garden Grove as Galilee.
The lighting toggles up and down to create suitable nuances highlighting the emotional tone of different scenes. Spare instances of backdrop music include some twangy Americana guitar and an African American spiritual set to a skiffle beat.
A slightly annoying ambient touch the production could do without is a small set of wind chimes that a couple times tinkle slightly, intimating “pay attention to this” when perhaps a mystical/spiritual moment is occurring. It’s an unnecessary, even cutesy cue in a show that otherwise already has the audience’s rapt concentration.
“Galilee, 34” arrives on the smaller Argyros stage a year after a well-received showcase reading at the annual Pacific Playwrights Festival.
It’s an emblematic production for what continues to be SCR at its best over its 60 years: showcasing new work in a production where you walk out the door feeling like you just experienced a bit of theater heaven.
‘Galilee, 34’
Rating: 4 stars (out of four)
Where: South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Dr., Costa Mesa
When: Through May 12. 7:45 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:45 p.m. Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays.
Tickets: $29-$105
Information: 714-708-5555; scr.org
