By Charles Hubbard, Second Year Theatre and Performance Studies
The sophomore production of Two Birds Theatre is a blisteringly smart, side-splittingly funny and extraordinarily well performed skewering of religious hypocrisy that also functions as a delightfully subversive picaresque of a priest having a very, very bad week.
To claim that the Church doesn’t always practise what it preaches is beyond old hat at this point. This domain of criticism is therefore usually reserved for two spheres: creatively bankrupt ageing comedians looking to press any hot button they can, and (oddly enough) the fifth Star Trek film. And yet Ave Maria - the second production from the all-star team at Two Birds Theatre after a Fringe run of their debut Down to the Felt - is so intelligently written on both the macro and micro levels, you feel as if you are experiencing criticisms of the Catholic Church for the very first time. And it’s the most riotously hilarious and deeply disquieting “The emperor has no clothes!” proclamation I have ever seen. By the time the play has regally swept to the end of its journey of manic chaos, you won’t know who to be more enraged at: the protagonist, the entire system the Church rests upon or yourself - for not buying another ticket to see it again!
As Dawn French, Tom Hollander and Andrew Scott (or at least their TV personas) well know by now, it’s not easy being a priest. Especially when, as is the case with Reverend Julian (a resplendent Claudia Osborne), you have to keep your true identity as a woman concealed, even as you carry on with Duchess Adela (Tilly Wade in her latest powerhouse turn), who’s married to Duke Marius (a wonderfully multidimensional Toby Bateman), whose uncle, Cardinal Richard (a preeningly volatile Jago Abbott), holds control of the purse strings that keeps Julian’s entire parish fed and watered. Throw in the fact that Julian’s just been given a job promotion that her good friend Peregrine (a charmingly sincere Sam Wolffe) deserved instead, and set over-enterprising nun Sister Matilda (Libby Connor stealing all the scenes she’s in - and some she’s not!) on her tail and you’ve got the makings of a delicious fall from grace. And a blueprint for a student production that punches so far above its weight class it often threatens to reach professional levels.
At the rapidly rotting heart of this sensationally sordid tale is the crossroads between the Church and capitalism - an evil as sprawling and cancerous as any of Moses’ seven deadly plagues. The characters in the play ceaselessly pretend to be far above the supposed ‘root of all evil’ and yet they like to follow the money as much as the next man. Rather than using the sacred scriptures of the good book to ghoulishly justify human atrocities (as many powerful figures still continue to do), Richard and Matilda go one better and use it as a bludgeon to beat as many gold coins out of those in their orbit as possible. In the scene where Julian is transparently manipulated by Richard into laundering the Church’s funds into the ever-expanding pocket of his oblivious nephew, the audience is reminded that the clanking of silver sounds louder in the ears of the play’s religious zealots than any voice of God.
And yet the pursuit of green isn’t the only callsign that makes our duplicitous serpents’ lizard brains tick. Lizzie Kilbride’s peerless script confidently asserts that nothing drips blood in the water like someone who dares to defy rigid gender conventions. The characters here denounce each other’s moral malfeasance like policemen handing out speeding tickets at an F1 race, and yet the only one deemed truly unforgivable and reprehensibly beyond the pale is Julian’s choice to hide her sex. The Church has a long and distinguished hit list of groups of people they wish to eradicate and yet queer people will always be at the very top. And Ave Maria carefully details the impossibility of functioning within such a system where you are constantly forced to throw those around you right under the bus as your only method of self-preservation. Yet this is not simply a story of a woman merely dressing up as a man in order to enter their chosen profession (à la Barbra Streisand’s Yentl), but rather someone who wishes to transcend the binary notions of male and female sex and reconcile the two in the same way that Christianity seeks to combine the notion of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit into one entity.
However, don’t make the mistake of thinking that this is some heartless satire which sees its characters as hollow, dehumanised bowling pins meant solely to be set up and knocked down. Quite the opposite - the play’s secret sauce is its deep well of empathy for their characters. At first, Peregrine seems to be a walking punchline (and one who masturbates disturbingly often), but is revealed to be a man living in guilt and torment at having to cover for his close friend’s flagrant lack of belief in the very Church she stands at the head of. Similarly, Marius’ characterisation appears to extend no further than his impotence and cuckoldry, before the audience learns that his pulsating anxiety at becoming a further far outpaces his pathetic inability to conceive. And most devastatingly, Adela shapeshifts from a sultry newlywed to a woman tragically bereft of any options outside her passionless marriage. The fact that Kilbride and co-director Jude Burrows steadfastly refuse to let the audience off without considering their creations as real people first and foremost is vital to get to the point where, when the ship finally does go down, you actually care for the people scrambling for the last remaining lifeboats. The scene where Sister Matilda is ousted from the Church is legitimately heart wrenching and moves to violently test the audience's allegiances to Julian with the power of a rearing bull.
And it’s funny as well! Kilbride and Burrows’ immaculate control of the tonal dial is matched only by their meticulous staging of their plentiful and show-stopping comedic set pieces. In one deliriously funny scene, Adela is hiding in a confessional booth, Sister Matilda is under the table and Julian is attempting to conceal them both, all while Marius reluctantly discusses his stubborn impotence while staring straight at the audience. How any of them, especially Toby Bateman, managed to remain in character throughout this is beyond me. And yet the play’s wicked taste for dark humour is just as well developed as its penchant for Rube Goldberg-esque Noises Off antics. Let’s just say that the slightly more sordid details of Julian passing for male are not lost on the creative team here.
And as if that wasn’t enough, the six performances here are all barnburners. With Julian’s inner conflict being perhaps the only element of the show you could possibly refer to as subtle, it would be very easy for Claudia Osborne to fade away in the middle of the much more aggressive histrionics of the supporting characters here. Fortunately, Osborne’s stage presence is so magnetic and entrancing she does quite the opposite - becoming the intensely charismatic ringleader for the entire circus and making her quieter moments, such as her deskbound prayers to God that go largely unanswered by the big man, sing just as beautifully as any of the louder narrative beats here. At this point, it’s obviously no secret that Tilly Wade can effortlessly bring the house down with her astonishing acting chops and strikingly sonorous voice. But that certainly doesn’t make it any less powerful when she is unleashed in her final scenes here. Her ability to balance the gentle, attentive patience her in-laws demand of her and the steaming righteous anger it conceals is downright superhuman. Sam Wolffe’s impeccable navigation of the deceptively difficult path from being the butt of every joke and an irredeemable wet blanket to being the de facto protagonist of the piece by the time the curtain falls (he’s easily the most defensible character by the end) is sneakily the most impressive skill on display here. And yet it’s also a road Wolffe walks without ever sacrificing humour or unbalancing the scales at play.
Jago Abbott returns to Bristol’s student theatre scene with an appropriately (and characteristically) cathedral-sized performance where you always hear his booming tones before witnessing his blood-red cassock - conveniently coloured for when you need to clear up a particularly gory dead body in a hurry! The cardinal is the only character in the play whose power is never truly under threat of being ripped away and Abbott wonderfully exudes the sizzling arrogance that supremacy of power inevitably creates with a final moment that will leave you breathless. However, Toby Bateman’s intensely sincere and well-judged performance may take the cake when it comes to unfurling a character’s hidden depths. His Cronenbergian transformation from well-meaning cuckold to damp object of pity to verbally abusive tyrant (complete with possibly unintentional flying spit) is the play’s biggest ace up its sleeve and the one it deploys with the most aplomb. And yet, even with the embarrassment of riches on display here, Libby Connor is never in danger of getting lost in the shuffle. On the contrary, she earns more cackles and shrieks of laughter with a simple eye movement or seemingly insignificant one-word line than most talented comedians do with a whole run of their best material. While Connor exits the play significantly earlier than the rest of the cast, her impact is so indelible it hangs over the remainder of the runtime like the Angel of Death.
Eli Grundy’s gorgeous set - complete with an impressively realistic confessional booth and crucifix - is the perfect fit for this comedy of ill-manners in terms of both style and substance. It’s easily as excellent as his more grandiose constructions for Spotlights’ Immersion Therapy and MTB’s Sweeney Todd in the Winston Theatre. The show also has the most astounding array of costumes I have ever seen in a piece of student theatre. Lillyanna Bryan’s choice of wardrobe is so exquisitely detailed and period accurate, I wouldn’t be surprised if she had to hop into a time tunnel to find the right costume cupboard to raid. If there’s one small issue I had with the production (and, with a show this strong, that’s definitely a pretty big ‘if’), it’s the slight deflation that happens in the last ten minutes. Any of the final four or five scenes here would be terrific choices of ending by themselves, yet the way they’re stacked side-by-side like this slightly diminishes their impact in a way that feels reminiscent of the final Lord of the Rings film. For a show that’s been so stridently decisive in every way for the first two hours, it’s odd that, when the play should be about to make its knock-out punch, it can’t quite seem to make up its mind.
Olly Francis
Suffice to say the play is good. Two Birds Theatre has proven that, when it comes to writing, directing and performances, they can go toe-to-toe with most non-student theatre companies and come out looking a lot better than the other guy. It’s a shame that the window has now passed for Kilbride and Burrows to make a bid to the Fringe with this show but I wouldn’t be surprised to see it be put on in a professional venue some time down the line. Stay on the lookout for it -it’s certainly not one to miss!
Featured image: ‘Ave Maria’ | Two Birds Theatre / Louis Rooza
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