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By Greg Paroff
In the beginning God created Man. And his name was Adam. Adam was gay.
Surveying the Garden of Eden, Adam tells God: "This garden is fabulous," then
quickly adds, "However, I would have put the lake over there."
Adam was lonely, so God created the first boyfriend: Steve. And so there was Adam and Steve. Thus begins The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told, Paul Rudnick's gay-themed parody of the Bible. There is nudity and frank language in this edgy comedy. It is jam-packed with some of the funniest one-liners and zingers in, well, all creation. And, it is Rudnick's interpretation of the creation story that has set off a ripple in conservative circles.
Danny Scheie, director of the production, is a UCSC theater faculty member and former artistic director of Shakespeare Santa Cruz, who has an "in your face" reputation which he lives up to with this production. Adam and Steve appear onstage in jock straps [read: fig-leafs]. That's only the beginning. Their discovery of sexuality is graphically caught en flagrante delicto complete with history's first simultaneous orgasm. Once expelled from the Garden - Adam's asked too many questions - they are thrust upon the world bare. Lucas Rocco Alifano, who plays Steve, described being fully-nude onstage as, "just about as vulnerable as a person can get," but ultimately, "not an issue." And indeed, while at first shocking, the nudity is staged artfully as to render it a non-issue next to the story being told onstage.
Scheie told the Sentinel: "The point of the play is to look at this 'Greatest Story Ever Told' and say 'What if you're not in that story? Do you re-write that story? Do you put yourself into that story?'" Calling the play "sacrilegious trash," Limbacher pointed out in his column, "the Bible does include homosexuals, and it condemns the practice." Scheie notes: "The Bible also condemns eating shellfish and condones slavery." Limbacher, longtime critic of everything liberal and co-editor of a NewsMax.com Clinton-bashing book, Bitter Legacy: The Untold Story of the Clinton-Gore Years, warns "anyone deranged enough to want to see the production… [to] be sure to bring your barf bags." Dan Kent, who plays Adam in the production, thinks he knows one person who would have attended the production. "Jesus would love this show," Kent writes in an email, "if he lived in Santa Cruz, he would be front row center every night." This might not be far from the truth, as Limbacher mockingly points-out Santa Cruz is Spanish for "Holy Cross." Margie Phelps, responded to Limbacher article by email on behalf of her father the Reverend Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas. The Reverend Fred Phelps is perhaps the most visible and well-traveled anti-gay activist in the US. The Phelps clan pickets the funerals of homosexuals carrying signs with such messages as: THANK GOD FOR AIDS.
Ms. Phelps writes, "a bunch of empty-ended, self-centered children - the students on campus - will flock to this show and take it in like it's something holy. All in the name of tolerance." Actor Alifano is proud "to be a part of something that really pushes the envelope… because it makes people laugh and have a wonderful time but it also forces the audience to think and be open to the ideas presented. The play [is] smart and makes you think about what you're laughing at." "Comedy tends to confuse most extremist groups," says Paul Rudnick, the plays author, who recently spoke by phone from his Greenwich Village, Manhattan apartment "they're incapable of irony." "When you put something decent," writes Ms. Phelps, "through the fag sausage grinder, perversion and lies is the end result." Director Scheie points out that, "People who hate gay people and their own sexuality would probably hate this production, as I'm sure Nazi's hate Fiddler on the Roof."
But Margie Phelps is far from happy: "this fiasco at UC Santa Cruz is just one more symptom of the deadly disease encompassing this land. We have institutionalized sin and we're going to face the consequences. Soon." "Since the Christian Right is notoriously ignorant about the theater and never attends it, I find any of their opinions irrelevant in the extreme. I do not comment on their bake sales," writes Scheie. When playwright Rudnick, was asked if he had any specific for his detractors, he offered "tell them I spoke to God personally and he said they're wrong." |
Author Paul Rudnick 
Actor James Murtaugh plays hate-monger the Rev. Fred Phelps in The Laramie Project 
Scene from The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told
© 1997-2002 BEI