Bristol theatregoers will probably be familiar with Living Spit theatre company. They have been staging their quick-paced, irreverent comedies round these parts for a long time. And now they’re back, despite the much lamented recent death of co-founder and lynchpin Howard Coggins.
The new production takes the sobriquet ‘irreverent’ quite literally. There’s something quite brave about choosing Easter to launch a show which brings some lighthearted fun to Jesus’s last days. Back in the days of Mary Whitehouse, there would probably have been placard-waving Christians outside the venue. Now there is just the Tobacco Factory audience—always a surprisingly old demographic, with silver hair outnumbering Gen Z by about 80%—happily chortling at gags about wine-based miracles and coming on a donkey (nudge, nudge).
The maturity of the audience is useful insofar as it means that they are more likely to be up to speed with the story being subjected to some gentle parody, since The Passion of Living Spit is basically a fairly accurate—albeit freely interpreted—retelling of the latter parts of the Gospels; or, if you prefer, Jesus Christ Superstar without the songs. It also means they will get the clatter of intentionally anachronistic references to Wham!, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cheryl Baker.
With a cast of just three, and with one actor (Beverly Rudd) playing Jesus throughout (in the style of a brash Northern club comic), the show is a cavalcade of super-rapid transformations—or should that be transfigurations?—for the remaining actors, Peta Maurice and writer Stu McLoughlin, as they play every other character from Mary Magdalene to Caiaphas, as well as all twelve disciples. Alongside the precision-engineered costume changes, they also deliver an astounding range of quite believable accents to differentiate between their many, many roles.
In some ways, the show feels oddly like a theatre-in-education production touring schools to tell impressionable young minds the story of the Passion. It has that simple, cobbled-together feeling—exceptional inventiveness on a minimal budget. But no TIE show would ever dare to be quite so rude, or venture into areas like suggesting a mutual attraction between Mary Magdalene and Jesus or the fact that Christ might have had second thoughts on the cross.
Quickfire wit, broad brush parody and a healthy dose of blasphemy, delivered by a tiny cast who have total mastery of their medium—the perfect mix for a good night in the theatre. Although the devout might want to turn the other cheek.