Jeezus! at Underbelly Cowgate – Edinburgh Fringe review

Faith and queerness may seem irreconcilable, but not for Untapped Award–winning theatre company Alpaqa. Jeezus! follows an adolescent Peruvian Catholic, also named Jesus, caught between his devotion to God and an inconveniently erotic attraction to Jesus Christ. With his first Holy Communion looming, he is wracked with psyche crushing guilt for his immortal soul, the pressure intensified by a deeply homophobic father whose strait-laced piety is bolstered by Peruvian President Fujimori’s dictatorial regime.

Instead of turning away from religion, Jesus turns to Catholicism for guidance, only to be answered in person by the actual Christ, crown of thorns perched jauntily above a sparkling gold loincloth, who professes his own love and hatches a plan for the two to run away together.

It’s a set-up that promises unaltered blasphemous satire, but writer Sergio Antonio Maggiolo sidesteps the easy route: Jeezus! is not about renouncing faith, but about finding a way to reconcile it with queer love.

Crucially, Jeezus! refuses to sneer at the solace and community that religion can offer. There is a heartfelt reverence to Catholicism, explored through the quiet faith of Jesus’ mother, who finds comfort in its rituals. Yet Maggiolo’s book also revels in Catholicism’s absurdities, caricatures of sanctimonious monks, sly pot-shots at the Church’s sexual repression, balancing irreverence with affection.

The score, co-created with Guido García Lueches, fizzes with variety, shifting from Lloyd Webber-esque ballads to Peruvian folk melodies. Both Maggiolo and García Lueches bring infectious energy, with García Lueches multi-rolling across an array of characters. Under Laura Killeen’s direction, the production crackles with electricity, the pace never flagging.

Jeezus! wears its silliness proudly, but beneath the camp flourishes lies something altogether more sincere. Heresy was never so heartfelt. Let’s hope for a London transfer (or a second coming).