Darkness Falls (Theatre thoughts)

I was about to title this 'theatre review', but not feeling I am a qualified critic (nor having the autonomy and confidence of Anna Larpent to declare myself one anyway) I've decided to stick with 'theatre thoughts'.

Last night, Saltmine Theatre came to Cambridge and put on a performance called 'Darkness Falls'. It was a retelling of the gospel of John, set after Jesus' death and resurrection. John has been imprisoned for his writings on the charge of sedition, but in the prison he is sent to he continues telling the story to his cell mates: Simon the friendly but cynical Greek, Lavinia a fierce but hurting woman, Lucius the 'simple-minded' one and Titus, the tough and violent ex-hitman. Initially distrusting of John, they are drawn into his story and take on the characters of the narrative as they act out Jesus' life on earth. Reality and narrative overlap and become indistinguishable. Their grimy prison water is turned to wine at a 'wedding' between Lavinia and Titus, their meager rations of bread are multiplied and they scramble to pick up the crumbs, the blind see, the lame walk, and Titus-playing-Lazarus is returned from the dead. As the prisoners act out the story of Jesus, each has to grapple with the personal implications of the tale, and what Jesus means for them.

There were just 5 actors and one set - a prison scene of 4 bunk beds and a cage covering a dark chute, a punishment mechanism for wayward prisoners aptly called 'The Fall'.

Lucius, the 'simple-minded' man, role-played Jesus. Alex told me she liked that, the unexpected nature of it, his confidence in his role. He did have the greatest character development of them all, but I also liked how Saltmine theatre unintentionally (or intentionally?) picked up on C.S Lewis's trilemma, which he wrote about in Mere Christianity:

'I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.'

At one point, John, role-playing Pilate, screams at Jesus 'What is Truth? What is Truth?' which reflected the intentional difficulty of separating the prison-narrative from the gospel-narrative. Lavinia, acting as the woman at the well, reels in shock when Lucius/Jesus tells her of her adultery, and we are told later that she was put in prison for adultery, but in the moment it is unclear whether her reaction was her invested acting as the woman at the well or the surprise of Lavinia, realising that even her past is something Jesus freely forgives, and her person someone he offers living water to.

The play begun in darkness, and ended with a flash of blinding light. 'In Him was life, and that life was the light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.'