ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Theater review:


'Gospel of John' has a different take
on its text


By Kerry Reid
Special to the Tribune
Thursday, February 8, 2007
FINAL EDITION


"I tell you the truth." Those five words run like a mantra through the fourth gospel in the New Testament, the one credited to the "disciple whom Jesus loved." Atlanta-based actor Brad Sherrill has repeated that sentence--along with all the rest of the 20,000 words in the gospel--to audiences throughout the United States since 2001. It's a testament (no pun intended) to his warmth and charisma as a performer that Sherrill can still make almost every segment of this exhaustive, but occasionally transcendent, devotional exercise cum theatrical event seem as if he's saying the words for the first time.

But the certainty of the phrase also underscores the inherent problem in "The Gospel of John"--its protagonist has no doubt in his abilities and purpose on earth. And since we all know how it's going to end, there are few surprises in the narrative. This is a show (Sherrill appears under the auspices of Provision Theater) that will resonate with believers more than the unchurched. No matter how warmly ecumenical the narrator's persona, it's hard not to feel a chill on hearing, "Whoever rejects the son will not see life, for God's wrath will stay upon him."

Yet there are praiseworthy elements in the show aside from Sherrill's sheer powers of memorization and his ability to touch an audience. It's refreshing to see a piece of theater that doesn't use organized religion as the stand-in for all the world's ills. The Jesus of John isn't suffused with self-doubt, nor is he a prig, which makes it more understandable that the Pharisees scoff at the notion of the messiah as a soft-spoken slacker from Galilee.

Sherrill's Jesus isn't exactly one-dimensional either. The first joyous miracle of the water-into-wine at Cana is followed immediately by Jesus thrashing the moneychangers in the temple. Sherrill didn't do any editing, so John (or whoever actually wrote the text, and I'll leave that debate to the biblical scholars) certainly had some notion of showing different facets of Christ's temperament.

Scott McTyer Cowart's staging also emphasizes simplicity. The set is a wood-planked affair with only a table, chair, stool and a few water vessels and a bucket of rocks, the latter of which is used with great effect during the crucifixion scene (every bit as disturbing as Mel Gibson's exercise with none of the stage blood). The resurrection of Lazarus is a riveting bit of stagecraft.

Sherrill's performance allows Christians a chance to hear the words without the interpretive voice of a minister coming between them and the text. 

ctc-tempo@tribune.com