Month: April 2004

There’s a short bit of streaming video running constantly at Bellevue Baptist Church’s Web site. Grainy animation provides the illusion of motion for otherwise still photographs depicting the life of Christ. Though the clip is silent, the accompanying text has been carefully assembled to remind readers of a booming Hollywood-style voiceover.

“He is despised and rejected by men,” the trailer begins. “He has borne our grief. He was wounded for our transgressions. He poured out his soul unto death. He bore the sin of many, and this spring Jesus returns to send all the bad guys back to hell with heart-stopping, heaven-sent kung-fu action.”

Okay, all that stuff about kung-fu and hell — I just made that up. But you get the idea. The Memphis Passion Play isn’t just some run-of-the-mill pageant that’s being promoted. Do not expect to see a handful of bashful, Kool-Aid-stained children dressed in their parents’ bathrobes with sheets tied to their heads, adorably misremembering their lines and accidentally rewriting the Bible. This is a very serious production produced by a mega-church with deep coffers and virtually limitless resources. It’s no “pageant” whatsoever.

Though it is produced indoors (in the church’s 7,000-seat sanctuary), it is realized on the kind of epic scale usually reserved for outdoor dramas like Unto These Hills or The Legend of Daniel Boone. Lightning flashes, thunder rolls, and the production climaxes with an earthquake even the audience can feel. With a cast and crew of nearly 900, it might very well be Memphis’ largest locally produced theatrical. To provide a little more perspective, Mesa, Arizona’s 66-year-old Mormon-produced Passion play may claim to be the largest in the world. And while the Saints’ spectacle does sport a somewhat larger cast than Bellevue’s modest 300, Mesa’s combined cast and crew is only 500 strong.

On Saturday, a week before opening, the set is nearly complete. The main stage, as large as any in town, if perhaps not as deep, has been turned into a rocky hill in Jerusalem. But the set doesn’t stop there. To the left, there is a monstrously large representation of a Jewish temple. To the right, we see Pilate’s home and a smaller dwelling. The stage is filled to capacity with volunteer actors in sweats. The aisles are lined with additional dancers, the orchestra pit is full, and a robeless choir is seated down front, music in hand. There is a second, smaller stage in the auditorium for the director. He paces back and forth, joyfully barking out directions on his microphone: directions like, “Shepherds, can you sit down?” “Ladies and disciples, get ready for the stick dance.” “Judas, I really like that thing you’re doing.

“This is where we show the might of Rome,” he says, “with legions and animals.” Drums bang out a throbbing Middle Eastern rhythm. Amateur dancers whirl about, and everyone shouts, “Hooray, Jesus is coming!”

Yes, “Hooray, Jesus is coming.” It may not be the most sophisticated dialogue, but when 300 people jump up and down at the same time, the message gets across.

“We try to show the joy of Jesus,” says James Whitmire, the music minister at Bellevue Baptist who has watched the church’s Passion play grow for 22 years. “Jesus was a person,” he says. “People loved him. The Pharisees said he ‘spent too much time with sinners.’ When the crucifixion comes, we want people to say here was a God that came to earth and lived a full life.”

Whitmire recalls Bellevue’s first Passion play inside its old church in Midtown. “It was called Living Pictures,” he says. The choir stood on either side of the stage like a Greek chorus while the Passion of Christ was acted out behind a scrim. It was a simple shadow play with music. It’s now five times larger with a script and music written by members of the congregation.”

At this point, it might be helpful to remember the words of Jesus. He told the world that a widow’s pennies meant more to God than the elaborate sacrifices and loud prayers of the Pharisees. Bellevue is a gigantic organization with a sprawling campus and neighboring athletic field. There are few organizations capable of mounting such a tremendous spectacle, and given Jesus’ feelings about over-the-top displays of faith, it does give one pause.

“We’ve got a lot of members of the church who are carpenters,” Whitmire says. “It’s a core of about 70 volunteers who are carpenters, and they built the set pretty much overnight. We feed them supper at 11 [p.m.] and breakfast in the morning. They do it because of the end result. Because so many lives are changed. We have all of these women who sew and are just so talented. We have people who cook and all these wonderful ladies who provide child-care. And it’s all volunteer. They could never afford to do this on Broadway.”

Whitmire has 900 volunteers giving what they can, and in the end, it would appear, all those pennies add up. So, in the spirit of the Easter season, “Hooray for Jesus.”

The Memphis Passion Play runs April 2nd-7th at Bellevue Baptist Church.

Do the monkeys fly? Yes, they fly. Well, they swing about a bit. It’s pretty tragic, really.

But does the witch fly? Oh my, yes, but only once that I recall and very early in the show. It happens fast and flawlessly and is really quite spectacular. It gives the impression that you are about to see something special. And that impression is not entirely false.

But does the witch melt? Oh God, yes, yes, yes, of course the witch melts. What a stupid, stupid question. You simply cannot do The Wizard of Oz if the witch doesn’t melt. It is a law, most likely. Next?

Okay, smart guy, how does Playhouse on the Square pull off a tornado on stage? Please, ask a hard one next time. They do it with projection, silly. This is the 21st century. We have the technology to project a black-and-white swirl that eventually turns into a colorful swirl while little pieces of Kansas fly offstage on wires. And before you even ask, yes, the Wizard is introduced as a big green head projected on curtains. He’s more frightening on celluloid but not nearly as bizarre. And for your complete edification, everything that happens in the movie also happens in the play. That is the point of this incarnation of Frank Baum’s classic story. Okay, okay, so the Scarecrow doesn’t get set on fire, but that’s the only real deviation from MGM’s solid-gold standard.

But does it work? Well, when it works, it works. And for the kiddies in the crowd (possibly the reigning majority), it seems to work every time. Then again, when the Wicked Witch of the West has to run around stage, manually disconnecting her monkeys from their flying harnesses so they can stop swinging around helplessly and go do her evil bidding, the magic disappears. It suddenly morphs into gimmickry. And while director Shorey Walker has done what she can to make this show her own, gimmickry is really what it’s all about.

This Wizard of Oz tries to be faithful to the film. It also tries to be original. Now let’s be frank: You just can’t have it both ways. The original songs are all here (even Harold Arlen’s “Jitterbug,” a number that was shot but cut from the film). But all those songs you grew up with and know by heart have been — ahem — brought up to date. Hey, doesn’t everybody want to hear “Over the Rainbow” given a hip, new soft-rock treatment yet again? It’s difficult to think of the play’s few deviations from the source material as anything approaching improvement. In fact, this production, when not busy appropriating, fairly revels in fixing things never broken to begin with.

I assume there is no need to retell this tale. Little orphan Dorothy, raised by her uncle and aunt in Kansas, is swept away in a cyclone to the merry old fairyland of Oz, where she meets a good witch and a bad witch and a tin man and a scarecrow and a cowardly lion. I didn’t think so. And that’s part of the problem. If you’re going to almost imitate this classic film more than 60 years after the fact, there is no avoiding a touch of post-modernism. There are countless winks (and snaps and “thank ya, boys”) to the extra, occasionally subcultural meanings this too-familiar film has picked up over the years. Can anyone say “friends of Dorothy”? Fabulous. And while these self-conscious moments fly by (and well over the kiddies’ heads), they are almost annoying. Part of The Wizard of Oz’s charm is its childlike sincerity and too many winks and nudges can spoil the rainbow stew. Homage is a dish best served simply, without garnish. And po-mo or not, it’s hard to see African Americans dressed up like crows putting on a full-fledged minstrel show without your flinching just a little bit.

This past Sunday’s matinee was low on energy. The voices all seemed a little tired and shaky. Then again, anyone who goes to sit in the dark and watch a Sunday matinee on a beautiful spring day deserves everything they get. It’s a proven recipe for disappointment.

Angela Groeschen does a smashing job as Dorothy Gale, calling to mind Judy Garland without ever doing an exact imitation. Most impressively, she never lets Toto upstage her, a feat anyone who has ever worked with an animal should certainly envy. It would have been nice to see just a little more character from the actors who play Dorothy’s famous friends and a little less mugging from the Wizard. But all grumbling aside, if you want to see a nicely done live production of a movie you grew up loving, here it is. Buy your ticket, enjoy the ride. A trip to Playhouse is certainly cheaper than a day at Disney World. And it’s a heckuva lot closer, to boot.

Through April 18th