You read the internet, now see the play...
Behold! The Monkey Jesus is the second show I have seen at the Jack Studio Theatre in the Brockley Jack pub, and worth the visit.
Billed as a ‘restoration comedy’ this is the (well almost) true story of Cecilia Giménez’s ‘restoration’ (and that’s quite the wrong word) of Elías García Martínez’s 1930 Ecce Homo fresco in the church at Borga. Re-titled by the curious ‘Ecce Mono’ (behold the monkey) it was an internet sensation in 2012.
This is an 85 minute three hander (with much doubling) and is always engaging and at times hysterically (of the ‘problem’s breathi
ng’ variety) funny. It also makes you think. Not bad for a play that opened only six weeks after it was first commissioned (the author told us in the bar afterwards) – and the author, the annoyingly young Joe Wiltshire Smith may well be a name to watch out for.
Staging and rehearsing a play in six weeks is what rep was all about, of course, but add in writing it and it looks a touch awesome. Although it could do with some further polishing and review (not surprisingly) it already has a transfer (to the Riverside Studios) when its run closes at the end of this week.
Absolutely worth catching there, if you can.
[And, a clerical aside, the local vicar did try to get the author to change the play's title - to no avail! You couldn't make it up!]