Kerry O'Quinn: Kerry O'Quinn is an Austinite living in New York City. This review was originally published in White Crane Journal (#41). It is reprinted with permission from www.whitecranejournal.com online.
“The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told” is the most wonderful play I've seen in years. Writer Paul Rudnick has created a theatrical entertainment that combines profound seriousness with utter silliness. He starts with a fresh vision of the Bible, as seen through gay eyes. Adam finds a copy of the Bible and announces, “I've got a book here that solves all the biggest problems of life.” A friend asks, incredulously, “Even stains?”
The second act moves the characters into present day reality. By the end of the evening these delightful souls have explored in all philosophical
directions, learned, evolved, and grown. Biblical legends are replaced by an eagerness to confront life as it is. Adam tells his boyfriend Steve (who's been with him forever!), that when the baby is born to their best pals, lesbians Jane and Mabel, “I won't tell her about the Garden of Eden. I'll tell her about Central Park, where we met.”
The entire cast is superb, but Adam and Steve are perfection as characters and as positive physical symbols. Adam is a cute, pale strawberry blond, and Steve is dark and rugged. They both have ideal bodies, and life in the Garden of Eden leaves nothing to the audience's imagination. The settings are as elaborate as a spectacular off-Broadway musical, and there is background music throughout, often driving the mood and generating the laughs. One reviewer said, “You will find yourself laughing uncontrollably.” And I did.
Tackling the big questions and issues of today and of all eternity, The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told bounces with energetic swiftness between amazing, tour de force drama (Mabel's bull dyke birth scene) to standup zingers (Would you rather leave and have a roomful of five gay men talk about you?) There are ideas to think about for weeks, and there are tears of pain and joy, and there are laughs so unexpected and so on-target that the audience finds itself unable to recover from hysterics and let the play prance forward.
Paul Rudnick just might possibly be God, whatever that is.
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