The Man Jesus (Lyric Theatre)

I ordered a glass of water for the interval, but someone changed it into wine. Your man Jesus is everywhere, moving in mysterious ways, and he never moved more mysteriously than he does in Simon Callow‘s belting new solo show, scripted by Matthew Hurt from the Gospels and the New Testament, and stopping off on Shaftesbury Avenue for one night only during a long tour (tonight York, Thursday Guildford).

Actually, as the Lyric is still the long-term home of Thriller, Callow could have borrowed a few of Jacko’s mysterious moves and slid around the desert for forty days in more stylish a manner perhaps. But the point of course is that we never really meet Jesus at all, except in his parables. He exists only in the accounts of others: his mother Mary, Simon the fisherman, Judas the envious disciple, Joanna Antipas, John the Baptist, King Herod, Pontius Pilate.

So Simon of Shaftesbury, as opposed to Simon of Cyrene or Simon of Galilee, bulldozes around the stage adopting a range of Scottish, Scouse and Belfast accents that are at first accompanied by an identifying word on a projection screen so we know who’s who and what’s what. Callow’s not an accent expert any more than Vanessa Redgrave is, but he does pretty well here, with only the odd slip-up in what you might call vowel play. It is, though, a mighty relief when he gives up the struggle and speaks calmly in his own voice as Joanna.

And the glorious accumulating power of the show is the sense of political tumult, danger and resistance you get in the occupied territory of Judaea, where many Jesuses and terrorists are on the loose and the conversation never gets round to matters of the soul or salvation. "He’s just a man," exclaims a follower, echoing Mary Magdalene in Jesus Christ Superstar, a show that does the same sort of job as Simon does here, but with better music and more lights.

Simon's set is a pile of wooden chairs which he arranges in a line for the jabbering of Lazarus, or the Last Supper (which is a right old bun fight), his lights a few standing lamps on each side of the stage. The perils of a one-night stand are evident in Joseph Alford's staging when those lights dissolve at the very moment Simon needs them. But the rough and ready nature of the evening, the noise and vigour of Simon's attack, are all part of its purpose: to remind us that true faith, true goodness in the world, has nothing to do with the lighting of candles, the singing of hymns or the consecration of cardinals.

The Man Jesus continues its UK tour until 4 November.