VILE BODIES

...After the show, my wife met us for dinner...

...Now let’s all get very, very drunk...

...But controversy turns out to be the only thing Corpus Christi has going for it...

...When the censorious old priest comes out to chastise him, Joshua creases his cheek with a hard slap...

...As quickly as it had canceled Corpus Christi on May 21, Manhattan Theater Club reinstated the play on May 28, announcing that patrons would have to pass through a metal detector before taking their seats...

...Most reviewers concurred...

...McNally, remember, is no petulant tenth-grader, but a fiftynine- year-old playwright with a platoon of Tony Awards and Pulitzer Prizes on his mantelpiece...

...I had no plans to see Corpus Christi, but when a friend came up with an extra ticket for a preview, I decided to take it—though with considerable trepidation...

...On opening night, Tuesday, October 13, a rain-soaked throng of protesters massed behind New York City police barricades outside the midtown Manhattan Theater Club...

...I expected the roaring of lions...

...How was it...

...Thanks to the rosary ladies, the entire six-week run has sold out, and good liberals will be forcing themselves to sit through an evening of trite, soppy-sentimental, fourth-rate theater—all to make themselves feel they’ve done something noble...

...VILE BODIES The Curtain Rises and Falls on Corpus Christi, Terrence McNally’s Gay Jesus Play By Rod Dreher Whatever else might be said about it, Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi, the controversial “gay Jesus” play, has been good for ecumenism...

...In the event, the play proved terrible simply as theater: puerile agitprop masquerading as challenging art...

...He says God is love, and men love God when they canoodle each other...

...Oh, so he’s an Episcopalian...

...Its dramatic and intellectual thinness is stunning,” wrote Slate magazine’s Jacob Weisberg...

...Later in the play, while Joshua is being lashed at the pillar in the background, McNally has a nasty nun taking a ruler to the knuckles of an errant Catholic schoolgirl...

...Joshua picks up another apostle at a gay disco, but what really gets him in trouble is uniting James and Bartholomew in holy matrimony...

...I got the yapping of poodles...

...My wife tends to worry about the residue left in my mind by the films I have to watch as a film critic...

...For McNally, beating a man to ribbons with a whip is the same as a classroom red-knuckling by a sister...

...Spooked by the protest and by death threats allegedly received over the phone, some of the show’s top corporate patrons threatened to pull their subsidies...

...Soon he has begun his ministry and attracted a homophilic posse of Gap-clad hunks...

...Judas gets a vulgar rise out of the audience when he introduces himself by bragging about the size of his sexual equipment...

...And what of the protesters...

...Amid the crowd of rosary ladies and men wearing Notre Dame caps stood Hispanic Pentecostals, hands raised in prayer, and, strangest of all, a boldprinted banner reading “Muslims for Christ...

...The banality and childishness of this dreary thumb-sucker are incredible...

...turn ignited gay playwright Tony Kushner and other New York arty types to caterwaul about censorship and vow to boycott the theater in protest of what they condemned as cowardice...

...You don’t see that sort of interfaith agreement often, but then it’s pretty rare to find a stage Christ who buggers his apostles and goes to the Cross condemned as “King of the Queers...

...She looked relieved...

...How McNally kept himself from inserting at this point an angelic choir singing “Kum Ba Yah,” I’ll never know...

...As summer dwindled down, the New York Post’s theater writer, Ward Morehouse III, reported that McNally was revising the script to remove some of the most objectionable material, ostensibly so the expletives in the dialogue would not distract from the play’s serious theological message...

...The theater finally announced that it was shelving the production—which in Rod Dreher is chief film critic of the New York Post...

...It’s hard to fault them for coming out to demonstrate against what they rightly regard as a blasphemous abomination, and indeed McNally proudly intends to insult them: “If we have offended,” one character offers as the play’s summation, “so be it...

...Corpus Christi isn’t Cats, but it is undeniably the theatrical event of the season—as it was sure to be from the moment the New York Post reported on May 1 that McNally (known mostly for his light comedies on homosexual themes) would turn his talents to heterodox theology...

...McNally’s Jesus/Joshua is a milquetoast fellow born to whitetrash parents in Corpus Christi, Texas (the drama takes place in ancient Jerusalem melded with the playwright’s American hometown...

...Joshua discovers he’s bad at athletics and has a frail, artistic sensibility— hackneyed stereotypes that would be denounced as outrageously offensive had they been conceived by a straight dramatist...

...Nothing to it,” I answered...

...she asked...

...McNally’s solemn screed is not remotely dangerous, because it never takes the Jesus of the Gospel seriously...

...While protesters are right to complain that a play treating other religious or social groups so offensively would never have made it to the theater, it is no less true that a play this mediocre would never have been staged in such a prestigious venue except for its politically correct sensationalism...

...Having heard me carry on for weeks about Todd Solondz’s repulsive child-rape comedy Happiness, she was apprehensive about my seeing a play that promised to offend our most sacred and deeply held beliefs...

...Ben Brantley led his devastating New York Times review with: “The excitement stops right after the metal detectors...

...The friend who had brought me to the play, Lawson Taitte of the Dallas Morning News, previewed his review for me as we left the theater that night: “It’s Godspell for gay folks...

...He thinks gay marriage is neat...

...That’s the secret you will teach them...

...Jesus is a nice boy who says we’re all superspecial, and thinks nobody should judge anybody...

...From the opening scene (in which John the Baptist christens a cute male apostle with the words: “I baptize you and recognize your divinity as a human being”), McNally immerses us in nothing but New Age narcissism...

...The only challenge is staying awake for McNally’s Sunday-school hissy fit, a one-act drama so vapid it makes trendy theobabble sound like the Summa Theologica...

...Before long, Joshua is taking the lash at the post, and after nearly two hours of being thrashed by McNally’s noodley nostrums, we know just how he feels...

...Yahweh makes a brief appearance to tell Joshua—the Jesus figure—what his mission will be: “All men are divine...

...What did they expect, a homosexual Jesus that even the pope could enjoy...

...When it was reported that the play would present Jesus as a libidinous homosexual and would contain much profanity and raw sexuality, the usual suspects—particularly William Donohue’s Catholic League—promptly screamed in outrage...

...Joshua discovers his homosexuality when Judas comes on to him in the bathroom during the prom at—I swear this is true—Pontius Pilate High School...

...he says, as a final benediction...

...Her expression was tense...

...Of course for devout Christians, the play’s theological message is the offensive part—a point that eluded critics complaining that Christians shouldn’t gripe about a play they hadn’t seen...

...When one admits to feeling marginalized, Joshua coos, “We’re each special, we’re each ordinary, we’re each divine...

...Think that’s deep...