redjesus Okay, Jesus is gay.

No, that’s not really what Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi is about. But if that sort of artistic liberty with the story of “Our Savior” offends you—as it does many a provincial soul, evidenced last year by the cancelation of a Tarleton State University (Texas) performance after Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst stated that “no one should have the right to use government funds or institutions to portray acts that are morally reprehensible to the majority of Americans”—then stay away from the Garage Theatre for the next month.

See, Corpus Christi is a liberal-in-every-sense retelling of the Jesus story, wherein the fleshed-out Christ is Joshua, a Corpus Christi, TX, boy imbued with a sense of foreboding specialness that sets him apart from his peers, a sense that shapes his simultaneously beautiful and persecuted life. loafnfishes

If you’re looking for rigid Gospel parallelism, this isn’t the play for you, as the action takes place in a universe both biblical and present-day, where Joshua is both the Christ and just another gay son of man. This is a story that serves its own ends, not Christianity’s.

And director Tito Ortiz (not the MMA guy) and his cast of 13—all new faces to the Garage Theatre stage—serve it up like the tastiest of communion wafers in the showiest of monstrances, effectively inspiring the play with the holy host of characters necessary to populate Joshua’s journey from cradle to cross.

Ortiz has done a masterful job blocking a busy stage, and Matt Anderson’s excellent sound design and Yammy Swoot’s first-rate lighting job effectively immerse us in Corpus Christi’s even-shifting settings and grounding us in a consistent meta-aesthetic.

But in terms of the storyline, Joshua, of course, is the crux, and Jeffrey Fargo plays him with a strength and diffidence that brings home the humanity in the divine and the divinity in all of us.

At his senior prom Joshua meets Judas (Raymond McFarland), who turns Joshua on to broader horizons, and, well, just turns him on.

Despite its gay twist, the Jesus/Judas relationship of Corpus Christi is clearly derivative of Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ. Since perhaps a clever idea deserves to be used more than once in literary history, maybe McNally deserves a pass on this count.

ohjesus The problem is that, unlike Kazantzakis, McNally didn’t come up with a convincing rationale for Judas betraying Joshua, and so in an otherwise effective story arc we are subject to a bit of dramatic action that lamely limps by.

This is not to say that Corpus Christi isn’t, on the whole, clever. McNally makes great hay from appropriating Gospel elements to his ends. E.g., Joshua’s Gethsemane request that this cup passeth from him, while chronologically misplaced, is the cry of many a gay youth struggling with his/her sexuality.

At the same time, though, the play’s logic seems a bit too casual. When your textual universe is a free-for-all, perhaps the temptation to let inconsistency masquerade as freedom is too great to resist. For example, frequently characters demonstrate knowledge the biblical/historical Jesus story (sometimes as simply as using “Jesus” as an epithet—cute, but fruit probably too low-hanging to be sweet), yet they play out their own roles in the story as if in complete ignorance.

Ultimately, though, McNally is forgiven his trespasses, because Corpus Christi is not meant to be a definitive experience—Christian, gay, what have you—but instead simply tries to evoke the spirit of compassion for the plight of our persecuted sons (and daughters) whose love too oft still dare not speak its name.

This is your play, in which you may be well pleased.

CORPUS CHRISTI THE GARAGE THEATRE • 251 E 7TH ST (JUST OFF LONG BEACH BLVD) • LONG BEACH 90813 • 562.433.8337 THEGARAGETHEATRE.ORG • THURS-SAT 8PM • $18; $15 FOR STUDENTS & SENIORS • THROUGH AUG 27TH