Godbaby
The Defiant Theatre seems hell-bent on living up to its name. With each new season the company’s productions become more outrageous, gleefully flipping the bird at good taste and “professionalism.” Even their press releases and programs are full of hoaxes, pranks, and salaciousness; in a brochure announcing the current season, “XX” was quoted as saying he laughed so hard at last season’s shows his jaw hurt more than when he was earning cigarettes in prison.
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Such is the case with Christopher Johnson’s Godbaby, an ambitious world-premiere tantrum that condenses 2,000 years of Christianity into two hours. The play begins with a curious moment of semi-Christian mythology as two cavemen battle for an apple, then hurtles headlong to 27 BC, as Roman emperor Octavius is crowned Augustus Caesar. “To solidify Rome’s hold of the civilized world,” he announces, “we must make the lesser people realize their great fortune in being crushed beneath our boot.” Then he draws his dagger and sacrifices a lamb, which whimpers, shakes, and groans to cartoonish excess for a full minute before dying. It’s a scene that exemplifies Johnson’s theatrical strategy: he offers a moment of historical satire followed by an extended cheap joke. It’s a strategy that can work wonders if the satire is pointed and insightful. And in a city full of self-absorbed playwrights who can’t be bothered to look out the window, let alone read a newspaper or open an encyclopedia, Johnson’s eagerness to turn Western religious and political history into theater is welcome indeed.
The play works best when he uses pop-culture iconography to add new meanings to ancient history. He turns Ignatius of Loyola into a James Bond figure, a crafty Jesuit spy with a license to “stem the tide of Protestantism by any and all means necessary.” But at times even the playwright’s use of pop culture seems indiscriminate. Presenting the baby in the sun from Teletubbies as Emperor Constantine’s eternal sun god, for example, or turning the Thirty Years’ War into a game of Mortal Kombat may be momentarily amusing but offers little insight.
