In a “life imitates Father Ted” move, Newtownabbey Borough Council has cancelled a two-night run of the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s show ‘The Bible: The Complete Word of God (abridged)’ at the Theatre at the Mill, which is run by the council.
Councillor Ball has, of course, not seen the show, which has run for almost 20 years in several countries, including across America and in Jerusalem, with nary a serious complaint. Some religious leaders have actually used the show to teach Bible stories. But no, the godfearing folk of the DUP know best what God wants.
Meanwhile the rest of the tour of England, Scotland and Wales is now selling out at a rapid pace, so the RSC are laughing both literally and figuratively.
It is kind of depressing that that could happen in the UK (even if it is our Bible Belt, Northern Ireland). I thought bullshit like this only happened in America.
It is the first I have heard of the show, and I sort of want to see it myself now. Those guys are pretty funny.
I’ve seen the Shakespeare and America shows, and snippets of the Bible show. The opening of the Bible show is indeed pretty funny. And nothing I’ve seen or heard of it suggests a blasphemous approach.
Hah, just a reminder that, while America certainly has a large share of idiots, we’re not unique. BTW, their Complete Shakespeare (abridges) is one of the funniest shows we’ve seen.
It’s a good thing they’ll never be able to understand “the Bible told to the Basque”: their bunched underwear would strangle them to death.
Excerpt from Chapter 1:
In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth, and said God “let there be life”, and then God created Antxon, and for Antxon created He paradise, aka the Basque Eden. But then God saw that Antxon was unhappy. Said God:
“Antxon, I need one of your ribs.”
“A rib? To cook some beans?”
“No, to create some more people so you won’t be lonely.”
“More people? :dubious: Well, then make it three of them, and make sure they bring dry chick peas so we can play some cards, hey?”
I saw just the headline on another website the other day, and I immediately thought: “I bet it’s the fucking DUP.” We all know we got our Presbyterians, not the most liberal sect*. The DUP is run by SuperPresbyterians, who probably think Pat Robertson needs to stop being so permissive about everything. And the Pope drinks British babies’ blood.
*There are also Quantum Presbyterians, who tend to be more permissive, and don’t take sides in NI politics, all humans being equally puny.
My friend RTed this on twitter earlier:
“Things DUP oppose:
Abortion
Theatre
The gays
Acknowledging science
Themuns
The gays (different reason)
Shopping (Sunday)
Nightlife (Mon-Sun)”
They don’t really need to - it’s getting a lot of press and internet circulation all by itself, although judging by the Twitter activity they’re happy to keep it going. Perhaps for future tours though. As noted in the various articles about it, members of the Irish Supreme Court came to an earlier tour of the show and proclaimed it “Juvenile but not blasphemous”, which they have indeed included in their promotional material.
It looks likely now that they will indeed perform in NI at some later date to be arranged, although not at the original theatre. Funnily enough they actually came to Newtownabbey to do the tech rehearsals for the non-show, simply because everything had already been booked tour-wise. Sadly the rehearsals were not open to the public.
