August 2006 Bay Guardian

The Legendary and Fabulous Passion Play
Exit Stage Left, 156 Eddy;
1-800-838-3006, www.elgatotheatre.org.
$20. Fri/18-Sat/19, 8pm.

El Gato del Diablo Theatre Company’s second production is a marked improvement over last year’s quirky but uneven anti-Bush satire The Rise and Fall of the Monkey King. Again written by artistic director Shawn Ferreyra, The Legendary and Fabulous Passion Play is far more concentrated and focused, while its subject matter remains at least as grand (being a retelling of the life and death of Jesus and all). But Ferreyra, who posits a modern-day savior as a Latina drag queen sheltering four sexual misfits, wisely makes it a small story for all its universal (and immediately political-topical) significance. Led by Norman Munoz’s sharp and charismatic performance as Jesus Esperanza (founder of the House of Esperanza, an alternative family of love and acceptance), the five-person cast folds a parable of redemption into a humorously fresh story about friendship, flirting, and fighting — much of it taking place at the nightclub where Jesus “diva-states” the competition. (Wendy Marinaccio’s buoyant choreography nicely leavens the dance-floor melodrama.) Director Amy Louise Cole, working with a solid cast, puts just the right touch on material that might have seemed tediously overbearing or maudlin in other hands but here, at its best, confidently approaches the divine.