All right – a bad decision withdrawn. The councillors of Newtownabbey have thought better of it.
Newtownabbey Borough Council’s artistic board last week cancelled the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged).
The comic play was due to run at the council’s Theatre at the Mill from Wednesday, 29 January, for two nights.
But on Monday the artistic board decided to put the play back on and the full council ratified that decision.
The play will now go ahead as scheduled on Wednesday and Thursday.
Reduced Shakespeare Company vindicated!
Mayor of Newtownabbey Fraser Agnew, who is an Ulster Unionist councillor, said there was a “need to defend Christian values”.
“If it was a play to do with anti-gay material can you imagine the outcry there would be over that, if it was anti-Semitic, if it was anti-Koran… all of those things would create an uproar,” Mr Agnew said.
“So I have to create an uproar too!” Mr Agnew said to himself. “If they can I can. It’s not fair. Mom always liked them best. I don’t want to. You’re not the boss of me. I hate spinach. Put me down. Christian values are the best so yaboosucks!”
H/t Ashling
I’m curious. Is this production actually anti-religious or mocking in character? Or is it an accurate reflection of some of the sillier parts of the bible? Cuz, from a wannabe xian martyr with an overdeveloped sense of persecution, I’m not sure which would be worse….
Wylann,
It’s these guys who also do The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged)*…with 3 actors in about 90 minutes. The production I saw was neither anti-anything (literature, theatre, Shakespeare, whatever) nor mocking of anything, just a good night out with loads of slapstick and jokes based loosely around the plots/language/popular misconceptions of Shakespeare’s work.
* Other productions include the Complete History of… America**, Comedy, Christmas, Hollywood, Sports and Western Civilisation.
Wait. Agnew … Agnew … Don’t I know that name from somewhere? Only, I thought it was Greek. Well, so maybe it was Hungarian.
Damn!
Meant to add – the one on America would probably get a rise out of certain ‘pinheads’.
Their Shakespeare stuff is affectionate parody – it appeals to Shakespeare buffs or at least people familiar enough with the Bard’s work to get the jokes. I imagine a Christian with a sense of humour would appreciate the Bible production.
The Unionist who brought about the original ban hadn’t seen it and was basically playing More Christian Than Thou with the Republican – much as other religious protests are about staking a claim to ‘true Islam’, etc.
Interesting set of comparison there.
Homophobia is a real form of bigotry affecting a whole lot of innocent people who do no harm to anyone.
Anti-Semitism – ditto, targets a whole group of harmless people who for tens of generations have been persecuted purely based on their beliefs and the silly conspiracy theories anti-Semites have invented and used to scapegoat and dehumanise them in the most murderous ugly way.
Anti-*koran* – again, targets a form of bi –.wait? No! It doesn’t target an entire group of innocent people to be “anti-*koran*” but rather focuses narrowly on disagreeing with only a single specific religious text which (it cannot be denied) has some truly appalling messages and incidents in it? A book which in fact actually (I – and I think most objective observers – would acknowledge) does dehumanise and vilify other groups and calls for extreme violence against non-believers.
You can be anti-some or other book about LGBT life without necessarily being a homophobe.
You can disagree with the Torah and still be Jewish in the usual understanding of that word – there are plenty of Jewish intellectuals and atheists who take issue with what their holy texts say.
The koran? Well, isn’t it possible for reasonable people to disagree with that but still think Muslims deserve to be treated like everyone else – fairly and well? I think so.
We have bigotry without any good reason against gays.
We have bigotry without any good reason against Jewish people.
Then we have being “anti-” a certain religious book. (Which reason and history tells us has inspired a lot of violence and does have a lot that’s arguably wrong with it.)
One of those is the odd one out here.
I don’t know what it really means or says about Mr Agnews thinking, perhaps I’m making too much of this, but the fact that he chose this particular set of examples strikes me as saying,well, *something* that doesn’t add up.
“If it was a play to do with anti-gay material can you imagine the outcry there would be over that, if it was anti-Semitic, if it was anti-Koran… all of those things would create an uproar,” Mr Agnew said.
Pretty sure if it was any of those things Agnew would be among the last to call for a ban.