You’re not going to believe this. . – Washington in brief – Jesus Has Two Mommies – opera review
John Elvin
The Town Council’s banning of Santa Claus from a tree-lighting ceremony in Kensington, Md., provoked quite a bit of media attention recently. But if that one takes the cake, here’s one that wins the entire bakery. The Somerville Theater in Somerville, Mass., has launched the Christmas season by presenting a play described as a “multimedia schlock opera” titled Jesus Has Two Mommies. Performance artist Faith Soloway wrote the thing and stars in it as herself, accompanied by Christine Cannova playing her pregnant Irish-Catholic girlfriend. Daniel Gewertz of the Boston Herald has greeted the work with enthusiasm, praising it as “a lesbian revision of the Nativity tale just in time for the Yule season!”
The story goes that Soloway, concerned about her nontraditional relationship, meets Jesus. He informs her that the arrangement is quite acceptable and quite familiar to him because, actually, He had two mommies. They were Mary and Josephine, and they met at a dyke bar called the “Burning Bush.”
Soloway, a Jewish lesbian, said her purpose in presenting the play is “lighthearted,” involving “holding up [her] middle finger at some of our social constructions.” Being rendered somewhat slack-jawed by all this, let us yield comment to William Donohue, president of the Catholic League, an organization devoted to religious and civil rights.
“It would be more accurate to say that [Soloway] is holding up her middle finger at Christians and that few would see this as being lighthearted,” Donohue said. “It takes no courage to bash Christians in Somerville,” he added, noting that the community boasts snootily on its Website that it possesses a level of cultural refinement nearly twice that of mainstream America.
JOHN ELVIN IS THE NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT FOR Insight.
COPYRIGHT 2001 News World Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
