Corpus Christi

The most controversial and talked about play of the 1998 New York theatrical season, Terrence McNally’s Corpus Christi, begins: “We are going to tell you an old and familiar story.” But from that point on, nothing feels quite familiar again. What follows is a story that parallels the New Testament, and its subject is nothing less than the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus. But McNally’s Christ figure is a character named Joshua, a young man born and raised in Corpus Christi, Texas, in the early 1950s. Different from the other boys because he is homosexual, Joshua grows up in isolation and torment, an object of scorn. He flees Corpus Christi in search of a more accepting environment, gathering along the way a group of disciples who are bound to him by his message of love and tolerance. Joshua delivers his Sermon on the Mount, and officiates at a gay marriage ceremony, but, inevitably, his radical teachings (like Jesus’) will not deliver him from his fate.