The Last Days of Judas Iscariot

"This ain't your grandmother's Gospel."—Charlotte Stoudt, The Village Voice

"Confirms Guirgis's place as one of our most electric young dramatists."—Robert Burstein, The New Republic

"An ambitious, complicated and often laugh-out-loud religious debate."—Toby Zinman, The Philadelphia Inquirer

"The Last Days of Judas Iscariot by the phenomenally talented Stephen Adly Guirgis . . . is an extraordinary play . . . Not since Tony Kushner's Angels in America have I seen a play so unafraid to acknowledge the power of the spirit."—Michael Billington, The Guardian

"Breathtaking . . . A profoundly moving look at the difficulty of virtue and the necessity of mercy in an imperfect world."—Elysa Gardner, USA Today

"This expressionistic fantasy draws on sound theological doctrine to advance its soul-search meditations on guilt and redemption . . . Hearing [Guirgis's] theological arguments delivered in the rough idioms and unsophisticated accents heard on urban streets is to hear them loud and clear. In giving St. Monica the attitude of a hooker and St. Peter the voice of a dockworker, Guirgis is not diminishing their characters but arresting to their common humanity. A real jaw-dropper. [Guirgis] imagination is dazzling and his command of language downright thrilling."—Marilyn Stasio, Variety

"The ambitiousness of [The Last Days of Judas Iscariot] represents a welcome development by the fierce urban dramatist of Our Lady of 121st Street. The two plays link in certain essentials: The gutter vitality of the dramatist's language is obscenely alive in the mouths of biblical folk, and Mr. Guirgis' generous heart remains with the damned."—John Heilpern, The New York Observer

"Guirgis has made a name for himself as a gritty, urban writer who possesses both a natural intimacy with street language and the ability to make it sing . . . But to characterize Guirgis as a voice of the inner city might be denying his uncanny sensibility for language . . . The perennial saints and sinners who inhabit this play are given fresh and strikingly contemporary interpretations . . . The Scriptures have never read like this . . . The thousands of tiny gems within this play . . . keep the audience drinking in Guirgis' mosaic and thirsting for more."—Peter Santilli, Associated Press