Lamb’s to Parade a Play for Easter : It Won’t Please Everyone, Company Acknowledges

No one questions the wisdom of theaters that produce Christmas shows. Each year, at least a dozen around San Diego County stage such shows, to popular and critical acclaim.

But there is no comparable tradition of Easter shows. Now, Lamb’s Players Theatre, well known for its Christmas shows, is raising a few eyebrows as it readies “John’s Gospel,” an eight-person theatrical adaptation of the Gospel according to John, as its Easter offering.

Lamb’s will present the show’s American premiere Friday through Sunday at the Lyceum Space in Horton Plaza.

“We’ve had a lot of curiosity, but I have no idea what kind of response we’re going to get,” said Lamb’s artistic director Robert Smyth.

Smyth, who will direct “John’s Gospel,” sounded a bit frayed during rehearsal breaks between “John’s Gospel” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” which he will also direct for a May 1 opening at Lamb’s resident stage in National City.

When Smyth discovered the script last summer in Oxford, England, he thought the 1984 adaptation by British playwright Murray Watts would be perfect for the Easter season. So far, the play has only been done with British actors in peasant dress suggestive of a biblical setting.

To make it more accessible to local audiences, Smyth gives it an American spin by using American dress of the 1930s.

But, although he is enthusiastic about the piece, he is concerned that it might disturb people who think his company shouldn’t deal with religious issues and people who may think the company’s interpretation is wrong.

This is familiar ground for Lamb’s, though, whose members share a Christian faith but usually present non-religious works, from Sheridan to Shaw to Shakespeare.

“We’ve had people go, ‘Explain to me what this is.’ And it’s hard to do,” Smyth said referring to “John’s Gospel.” “Some people go, ‘I hope this isn’t a religious play’ and other people say, ‘Can I bring my grandmother to this or will she be offended?’

“And the answer is, I don’t know. We’re trying to break away from some kind of haloed saccharine approach to the material. If your grandmother feels it has to be a specific way or she might be offended, then she might be offended.”

The play, like the Gospel itself, is presented in vignettes interwoven with a narrative voice.

All the actors, except the one who plays Jesus, take on several roles as they perform the stories of John the Baptist’s recognizing Jesus, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the Last Supper, the trial, the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.

But it’s different from “Godspell” or “Cotton Patch Gospel”--two musicals adapted from the Gospel according to Mark and successfully produced by Lamb’s.

“John’s Gospel” is devoid of music and is, Smyth said, quite serious. Part of that can be laid at the door of John, whose Gospel has a distinctly different flavor from Mark’s.

“John isn’t usually tapped because there isn’t as much of a narrative story,” Smyth said. “The others go, ‘This happened and this happened and this happened.’ John tries to look a little more at the heart of things for the reason why things happened.”

Smyth stresses that this is a theatrical show, not a sermon. But it is still a story that touches on the deeply held beliefs of Smyth and his company.

Lamb’s is doing the show in part to celebrate Easter--a holiday Smyth feels is too often reduced to stories of bunnies and eggs if not downright forgotten in the long shadow cast by the Christmas holiday.

He says it’s also being done to examine--and at times challenge--the group’s feelings about the Gospel it embraces.

“We’re trying to explore material that has a core meaning to our own spiritual experience as people and as artists,” Smyth said. “Our mission is not to proselytize or make judgments, but at the same time that we’re approaching it theatrically, there are messages. There is a sense of personal religious faith in the story about an overcoming and conquering of death. And there is the confrontation of institution.

“At the heart of true religion is something that is anti-establishment that is always going to threaten power structures whether they are political or religious. Any religious teaching, after all, begins to cycle away from what it was first all about as the institution becomes more important than the heart of what was proclaimed.”

Of course, challenging institutions can prove a risky business. And that’s why Smyth is a bit apprehensive about breaking ground by presenting an Easter play--and about presenting this particular one, which is virtually guaranteed not to please everyone.

“We’re taking some risks with this. We’re going on ground that we’re not sure of,” he said. “I wasn’t even sure, just from reading this, how would it work, but I thought, ‘Let’s get dangerous with the ensemble and see if it does work.’ ”