Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
233rd out of 275 books
—
23 voters
The Last Days of Judas Iscariot
From one of our most admired playwrights, “an ambitious, complicated and often laugh-out-loud religious debate” (Toby Zinman, The Philadelphia Inquirer)
Set in a time-bending, seriocomically imagined world between Heaven and Hell, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a philosophical meditation on the conflict between divine mercy and human free will that takes a close look a...more
Set in a time-bending, seriocomically imagined world between Heaven and Hell, The Last Days of Judas Iscariot is a philosophical meditation on the conflict between divine mercy and human free will that takes a close look a...more
Paperback, 128 pages
Published
December 27th 2005
by Faber & Faber
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
528)
This is one fine play. I don't know if I have ever read anything that discussed a larger amount of interesting and important religious ideas.
What impressed me most, was how every character was so clearly portrayed, I felt like everybody who appeared in the play was complex and interesting, even if they only appeared for two or three pages.
I think my favorite character was Satan. He was funny and intriguing.
My only objection to the play was the language, which was profane. If I had been able to g...more
What impressed me most, was how every character was so clearly portrayed, I felt like everybody who appeared in the play was complex and interesting, even if they only appeared for two or three pages.
I think my favorite character was Satan. He was funny and intriguing.
My only objection to the play was the language, which was profane. If I had been able to g...more
One of those scripts that makes me wish I was still producing plays. Not the sort of thing that my friends at Taproot Theatre or A.D. Players could mount, because of the language, but theologically profound and deeply faithful.
What if a defense attorney in purgatory decided that Judas was deserving of God's mercy and should be liberated from hell? And what if Satan and his minions were just as determined to keep him? What kind of trial would that be? Who would be the witnesses for the defense an...more
What if a defense attorney in purgatory decided that Judas was deserving of God's mercy and should be liberated from hell? And what if Satan and his minions were just as determined to keep him? What kind of trial would that be? Who would be the witnesses for the defense an...more
I loved the rumination on salvation that this play accomplishes by using the structure and archetype of the TV crime-procedural drama. Also, Guirgis's facility with character and his dedication to biblical history/systematic theology creates a mash-up of Shavian Philosophical argument with Bill Hicks's insight. The story is ultimately dissatisfying however because its attempt at theodicy rests on the "Free-will" argument for evil and, in so doing, climaxes with an indictment of the victim as sum...more
This play really fascinates me; I think it's because I'm easily enticed by stories that try to make you look at what you know in a different light. I saw a rehearsal for it at the Liverpool School of Performing Arts last year. Three quarters of a year later, a lot of what I saw and heard stuck. It is intelligently written and the dialogue feels alive.
Certain things don't work quite as well for me: The monologues are often more tell than show, and while they give you more background, they don't d...more
Certain things don't work quite as well for me: The monologues are often more tell than show, and while they give you more background, they don't d...more
This ambitious epic of a show is as much entertaining as it is mind-bending. I will confess that there were aspects I didn't quite get until the second production I saw performed, but reading it a few years ago I was enthralled enough to find myself pondering its deeper philosophical questions on hungering deeply to track down productions so I could see if it stood on its feet. It does, even in a mediocre performance, and I find that each time I come back to this text different figures and theme...more
It's so hard to review the text of a play, especially after having seen it performed brilliantly. The lines read as I heard them when I saw Judas in April -- but the test was whether it would stand up to scrutiny, past that fantastic, emotionally-devastating production. It's undoubtedly a play meant to be performed, but suffice to say: it stood up. Indelibly. It may become/have already become somewhat dated, but that's irrelevant next to the food for thought it offers, the judiciousness to both...more
Set in a Limbo that resembles a fairly generic earth city, trials are held to determine ascension into heaven or to petition hell-bound placement. The primary action of the play involves the most unusual of cases to be reviewed, that of Judas Iscariot.
Judas's guilt is usually considered a given, but Guirgis has achieved a miraculous thing here: he has explored the actions of those surrounding Jesus's death and has somehow brought doubt regarding his guilt while managing to reinforce faith. Quest...more
Judas's guilt is usually considered a given, but Guirgis has achieved a miraculous thing here: he has explored the actions of those surrounding Jesus's death and has somehow brought doubt regarding his guilt while managing to reinforce faith. Quest...more
Part of the reason this was a bit disappointing was because the idea was SO COOL and also a friend recommended it and I usually take recommendations pretty seriously. There were some parts that were really interesting - like the Freud section and when Satan talks about how he loves God (sounds weird but it was good) but I couldn't get over all the biblical characters swearing left and right (I don't really mind swearing, it just didn't work in this case)and it was not my type of comedy. It felt...more
Terrific play ... I love the sensation of reading a play and, upon finishing it, instantly plotting to get it staged by hook or by crook. Guirgis manages to use street vernacular as an inclusive tool. Once the initial shock of hearing (for example) Pilate say things like "Okay, then, I'm a roll out, now, boo -- work on my short game" wears off, you begin to understand the character not as a mythic figure but as a recognizable human being operating within a specific power context.
Recently saw a production. Instantly had to read the text, and unfortunately, perhaps the performance was stronger than the text upon which it built. Interesting perspective on these almost super-human characters, but I felt that it was disjointed, and lacked an extra something that could have made it great. Then again, I am being hypercritical because I may or may not have seen this play over twenty times in a week.
Butch Honeywell is the best.
Butch Honeywell is the best.
A bunch of biblical figures cracking wise in anachronistic slang. There is ostensibly some kind of meditation on betrayal, loyalty, and sin underneath the clever flippancy of it all, but it's a challenge to detect it. It's mostly a bunch of silliness built on a thin veneer of pseudo-intellectual scholarship. Personally, I kept hoping for some new insight on an old story, but alas . . . it never came.
I loved reading this play, I would really like to see it performed. Many interesting ideas were brought up and I really liked the concept of purgatory changing shape based on the era. The only thing that would have to be modified, ever so slightly, is the bit about being unable to call Don Ho to the witness stand since he's still alive, he died a couple years ago.
Have been avoiding even perceived proselytizing increasingly (tried the first five pages of [i:]The Last Temptation of Christ[/i:] recently and had to stop—though that might also be the Palanhiuk/Gibson/K. Dick Effect, whereby they capture a toxic environment so brilliantly and successfully it actually makes me too sympathetically ill to read) but this one is more expansive than sharpshooting and fairly rocks. I may use a monologue from it in the future, and regardless of whether I agree with it...more
I'm still buzzing about how Fucking fantastic this script was! The story was compelling, the dialogue flew, and I couldn't put this down. Not usually something that I would tackle as far as directing, but I'm seriously considering it only because I can't stop thinking about it. Very powerful, even for an atheist.
It's not often that a play humbly challenges your view of the world. Guirgis' play is well-crafted, fusing humor with obscure facts about well-known people from Benedict Arnold to Mother Theresa, forcing the audience to question their assumptions. Everyone should experience it.
You know, this play is ridiculous. Ridiculous in that it takes a special kind of person to write it. A person that's willing to look at the New Testament as simply a story, rather than gospel. EXCELLENT play - the last scene alone should be a 10 minute play all by itself.
Reads like a first draft. Too much repetition and doesn't take a stance on anything. I enjoy ambiguity when it accomplishes something but this play is more interested in laying out every single possibly theological argument than giving any sort of insight.
Some scenes were good, but this is the kind of play that really, really benefits from being seen in production, I think. Which isn't to say that it's bad, just that reading it was a bit underwhelming.
I think the author also over-relies a bit on "shock jock" techniques like Biblical characters using street talk and obscenities, but what's underneath is good.
I think the author also over-relies a bit on "shock jock" techniques like Biblical characters using street talk and obscenities, but what's underneath is good.
Fantastic play. Not exactly what I expected when I took it off the script library shelf. It really was a good read for the mind. I definitely wouldn't take children or my preacher or my mother to see it performed, due to the fact that it's just oozing with profanity, but I really did enjoy reading it.
Interesting concept with some great moments and clever situations but ultimately succumbs to its inability to reach out farther than the breadth of its initial novelty.
A compelling, heart wrenching play! I didn't care for the profanity. It kind of annoyed me how overdone that was, but the content and the monologues were excellent!
An emotional wrecking ball that forces you to meditate on the nature of love, free will and despair. Not for those with a faint heart or a guilty conscience.
Fun, funny, and intriguing all in the same play. I like reading things that make me think and laugh at the same time.
Incredible and moving. A real life look at the saints and apostles and their relationship with Judas.
There are more important, common, every-day betrayals than that of Judas Iscariot to the Christ, Jesus.
A play full of originality and a hard unblinking eye looking right at faith and its costs. This is a play that never loses its spirit and soars to unimaginable heights.
This play is awesome. And it made me think a lot. I definitely need to read it again though, to understand and make up my mind about it.
Excellent monologues... wish i had seen the original production
The ending broke my heart...a very interesting and well written play.
It's so beautiful. So moving, and eloquent, and heart wrenching, and funny, and sad, and uplifting, and downtrodden. It takes you to so many levels and emotions and you can't help but feeling like you've experienced SOMETHING afterwards. If you can't be in a production of it, see it. If you can't see it, read it. It's worth it. This isn't about religion or what you believe. It's about the beauty that is the theatre and what it can produce
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced on five continents and throughout the United States.
More about Stephen Adly Guirgis...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“Right now, I am in Fallujah. I am in Darfur. I am on Sixty-third and Park having dinner with Ellen Barkin and Ron Perelman... Right now, I'm on Lafayette and Astor waiting to hit you up for change so I can get high. I'm taking a walk through the Rose Garden with George Bush. I'm helping Donald Rumsfeld get a good night's sleep...I was in that cave with Osama, and on that plane with Mohamed Atta...And what I want you to know is that your work has barely begun. And what I want you to trust is the efficacy of divine love if practiced consciously. And what I need you to believe is that if you hate who I love, you do not know me at all. And make no mistake, "Who I Love" is every last one. I am every last one. People ask of me: Where are you? Where are you?...Verily I ask of you to ask yourself: Where are you? Where are you?”
—
6 people liked it
“God is fucking stealing souls again!”
—
1 person liked it
More quotes…
Feb 27, 2012 08:11pm