Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Simone Tani, Carmen Arquelladas.
Monty Python lives and breathes, you just got to look for it under different names and be wary of the ones that don’t so much leave you having enjoyed the surreal nature of the event unfolding as more than open to thrash a pretend animal on its behind.
For budding Python, for the life of Brian or Jesus you didn’t see, Simone Tani’s and Carmen Arquelladas’ Resurrection Half Price is a blast of surreal moments put together so well that each segment is bordering upon genius and fully embraces madness.
Resurrection Half Price sees what would happen if Jesus had decided enough was enough and took his overbearing mother on by insisting that he have a break, a holiday in which he could let his hair down, hang with his friends on the water in the hotel pool and feel the sun in face; some might see it sacrilegious, more enlightened and people with a great sense of humour will see it for what it is, a play which allows the imagination to run and see the joke, not as being disparaging to Christianity but acknowledging the man in people’s saviour.
The run in to certain visual jokes was enough to set the smile up on the face and the realisation of what the tremendous pair were doing was enough for the Unity Theatre audience to descend into fits of giggles and the odd major snort of happiness; it was a set of visual scenes and the weirdly funny moments of crafted conversation between audience member and artist that kept the play hurtling along as if attached to a camel on steroids.
It’s never easy to take a such a delicate subject as religion or even some deity’s role within faith and give it a sense of humour, it might be misplaced, it could have feelings of diminished rumblings set upon it, however when it done well, when it excels that faith into a virtue by allowing the crowd to see the funny side of life, then it has hit with a blinding passion the right cord.
Resurrection Half Price is a very funny way to spend an hour, it takes getting used to but once the joke is seen for what it is, it becomes special and enlightening.
Ian D. Hall