Forum Theatre triumphs with Ruhl’s Passion Play

Everything about Sarah Ruhl’s Passion Play is ambitious.

Clocking in at just under four hours (yes, you read that right), the three-play cycle chronicles the staging of Passion plays across three places in geography, politics, and history. It uncovers, in the process, parallels in faith, morality, and aspects of human nature.

(l-r)Laura C. Harris, Benjamin Cunis and Shayna Blass
(Photo: C. Stanley Photography)

Ruhl grapples with church and state, and in so doing, most of the hotly-debated topics governed by one or both of those institutions: sexuality, war, family, honesty, sin, forgiveness, morality, mortality. All of life’s big issues. It is a collection of hugely ambitious topics presented over an ambitious stretch of time.

To everyone’s credit, therefore—from Ruhl to Forum Theatre to director Michael Dove and the 11 members of the ensemble—the production feels engaging, dynamic, and effortless. Remarkably, the rapid pace of the plays also gives the cycle a momentum swift enough to make audiences forget that they’re watching what amounts to a full-on Netflix binge of a show.

Because it truly is three plays in one. That’s what accounts for the length.

The first play follows English country folk as they try to mount a Passion play during the anti-Catholic reign of Queen Elizabeth I. In the second, it is players of a renowned troupe in German Oberammergau who are rehearsing the Passion, during Hitler’s ascent to power in the

Article source: http://dctheatrescene.com/2015/03/30/forum-theatre-triumphs-with-ruhls-passion-play/