The Ecstasy of Mother Teresa, or, Agnes Bojaxhiu Superstar
Written and directed by Alistair Newton
Original music by Reza Jacobs
Musical direction by Dan Rutzen
Featuring nisha ahuja, Andrew Bathory, Matthew Boden, Matt Eger, Jason Gaignard, Andre Kwan, Michelle Langille, Kaitlyn Regehr, Chy Ryan Spain
SummerWorks Festival
At the Theatre Centre until August 16
By Matt McGeachy
From Ecce Homo, the company that brought us last year’s hit The Pastor Phelps Project, comes another spin on religion and extremism, The Ecstasy of Mother Teresa — a clever pun on the name of the famous Bernini statue in the Cornaro Chapel in Rome — and perhaps a more controversial stab at one of the world’s most famous nuns: Mother Teresa, aka Agnes Bojaxhiu, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and founder of the Sisters of Charity in Calcutta, one of the most impoverished areas in the world.
The show’s premise is smart: most people don’t think ill of Mother Teresa. In fact, many believed that she should be canonized as a saint. The show challenges this assumption to present a more complex picture of an iconic woman, presenting her as radically fundamentalist, radically loving, and more than a little bit depressed. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that in the show, as perhaps in real life, she experienced a prolonged crisis of faith (which the show takes pains to point out has been characterized as sin by the Catholic Church to which she was devoted). For this complexity, the show deserves praise.
But agreeing with a show’s premise and appreciating its mission are not the same as praising a show’s artistic merits. With three original songs, it seems a shame that the most memorable after the fact is the parody of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Jesus Christ Superstar,” reworked as “Agnes Bojaxhiu Superstar.” The ensemble worked well together — I particularly appreciated the difficulty of choreographing the tap dance number — but there was a spark lacking and at times the message (Mother Teresa bad, Mother Teresa good) actually interfered to stop the fun on stage.
Some particular standouts were Matthew Boden as an S&M-clad Devil, who rocked the house with his duet with Jason Gaignard, a sexually promiscuous Angel; Michelle Langille as a sexy burlesque dancing nun; and Kaitlyn Regehr, whose Mother Teresa betrayed inner turmoil and hopelessness quite beautifully, if slightly out of sync with the cheeky tone of the rest of the play. The use of the MT puppet was quite funny, as well.
Some questionable staging choices at the ending, and the continued insistence of the cabaret-within-the-cabaret schtick detracted from the show. On the whole, this show is fun, but not brilliant, and smart, but not life-altering. A fine show for the festival.
