The Devil’s Passion or Easter in Hell: A Divine Comedy in One Act

Within the next hour, our operatives will isolate, engage and capture or kill the notorious leader of the most extreme, dangerous and contagious ideology to emerge in the modern era, whose terror activities represent the gravest threat to our interests across the region and the wider world. I refer, of course, to the radical preacher and populist demagogue Y’shua Bar-Yessuf - the man known, by way of shorthand to our operatives, as ＂Jesus＂.

Satan, the narrator of Justin Butcher’s one-man play who is looking out for our best interests, is on a mission to harness the ways of the dangerous extremist preacher Jesus. Jesus’ radical teachings and popularity have the potential to wreak havoc in the Middle East. This is exactly the sort of man the government warn us of, again and again.

This clever and evocative passion play from the devil’s perspective considers Jesus’ relevance to contemporary issues, and retells the story of Christ’s life from the perspective of the enemy. The Devil’s Passion received its world premiere in June 2015 at St James’s, Piccadilly, and was revived and toured in 2016.

Justin Butcher is a playwright whose Scaramouche Jones or The Seven White Masks, starring Pete Postlethwaite, premiered at the Dublin Theatre Festival in 2001 and was revived at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in 2014. Butcher read Classics at Oxford and subsequently trained at Drama Studio London. He has worked extensively as an actor, writer, director and musician all over Europe. Plays include King of Fools (commissioned by Westminster Abbey in 1995, it had five successful UK tours); Birth of the Jongleur (a one-man show commissioned for the Greenbelt Arts Festival, 1995); The Millennium Man, a modern adaptation of the Mysteries (Theatre Royal, Bath, 2000); Guantanamo Baywatch (New Players, 2004) and Go to Gaza, Drink the Sea (Theatro Technis, 2009).