Lies of a Promiscuous Woman

Monkey Centurion/The Company of Women—
Eckhardt-Grammaté (UofW)

Theresa Thomson stars as a reimagined “Virgin” Mary in this local production. Thomson does not sing, but backing her up is a sweet-voiced chorus of five other women and keyboard player Süss, who use either complete or—more-often—excerpted portions of various Madonna songs to highlight elements of her story.

Most of the time, this Mary, dressed in her traditional white and blue, delivers an ongoing monologue of her story while maintaining a magnetic rapport with the audience.

This play, by Audra Lesosky, is a clever, and possibly blasphemous, retelling of the story of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, who is here called by his Hebrew name Yeshua. The focus is not on the promiscuity of the main character, as the title may suggest, but instead on how this astute young woman—with little power in an ancient male-dominated culture—is able to use guile and marketing genius to live her life fully and create something powerful.

She is not only Jesus’ mother, but also his spiritual tutor, business advisor, and the guardian of his legacy. Like a marketing wizard of two thousand years ago, she looks at previous Messiah legends and succeeds at finding potent new angles to captivate the attention of the masses.

Effectively mixing comedy and pathos, monologues and music, this production is a courageous rebooting of the familiar New Testament story.

Konrad Antony