Corpus Christi - An Eye Witness Account

by Dorothy Boyett

Terrence McNally's highly controversial play Corpus Christi opened at the Manhattan Theatre Club Tuesday night, October 13, 1998. This highly publicized production, funded by $31,000 of taxpayer money granted by the National Endowment for the Arts, fell far short of critics' expectations. One New York Times writer quipped that "the excitement ended at the metal detectors."

Outside the theatre, the street was overflowing with Christians protesting this most recent blasphemous attack on Jesus Christ. Across the street, Norman Lear and his "People for the (un) American Way" and other celebrity supporters counter-protested. "Priests" in clerical dress representing the Metropolitan Community Church carried a large banner reading "God made me gay."

Members of the St. Michael's Parish, Bayside, NY, have maintained a constant prayer vigil everyday at the site. They have vowed to continue until the play closes. The Catholic League sponsored Tuesday's grand opening protest, but many non-Catholics were in the crowd of over 2000 who gathered to pray and worship for more than five hours outside of the theatre. One protestor said that she heard about the play on a Christian radio station that evening. A man from Philadelphia, PA exclaimed, "I'm 70 years old and I never thought I'd live to see the day when this many would turn out to protest!"

According to a London Newspaper review the story opens with the Virgin Mary screaming obscenely to Joseph for sexual relations; the Christ figure engages in homosexual relations with the disciples; and the Last Supper is a food fight. However most of the theatre goers who paid $50 to partake of this sacrilegious insult proclaimed the play to be "spiritual," "profoundly religious" and "a celebration of love." One woman obstinately declared that she wasn't offended in the least.

However, the critics who "got in free," told a completely different story. New York Times critic Charles Isherwood wrote: "The overlaying of the gay material onto the new messiah's life doesn't illuminate anything new in the story of Christ. In fact it begins to seem facile and hectoring: Joshua cures Philip of AIDS; he performs a gay marriage ceremony and then berates a priest for objecting to it; somebody's scolded for quoting a certain line from Leviticus while ignoring the Bible's larger meaning -- McNally is checking off all the proper points to be scored against the enemies of gay people who use the Bible as a weapon. Again, one sympathizes with the intent, but the execution is unhappily artless."

"...utterly devoid of moral seriousness or artistic integrity,'' declared The New York Post.

Note: Benefactors and patrons of the 300 seat Manhattan Theatre Company include: Barnes & Noble, General Motors, IBM, AT&T and the New York Times.