Episode 394 - Philemon -- I mean "Philemon"

About this Episode

Every day these days I seem to find out something important that I didn't know before.

For example, that Burton Cummings has just released a new album. Or that one of Joe Dante's favorite movies is a Spanish religious satire released in 1995. Or... that The Fantasticks is really good! Or that the creators of the latter wrote an uncommonly powerful musical about a Christian martyr.

As I say, every day is a rebuke to one's supposed deep bench.

This podcast looks at the abreactive power of music and the aspirations of live theater to get through to our real selves. Like a sermon is meant to do!

The vehicle is the off-Broadway play entitled Philemon, which first opened in 1975 and ultimately ran for about 55 performances. The lyricist was Tom Jones and the composer was Harvey Schmidt. Here, in Philemon, two mainstream Broadway artists tried to encapsulate the story of a radical Christian conversion in Third Century Antioch, and with just seven performers and maybe two+ instrumentalists. Funny thing is, they succeeded!

Sure, it could be cut by 40 minutes (!). Sure, the theology is a little sketchy, tho' entirely well meaning. BUT Philemon manages to capture the abreactive/cathartic form of "instant/automatic psychoanalysis" by which a converted person goes from death to life in concrete terms.

Philemon manages to get under the skin of Herr Moltmann's Tod-Auferstehung (i.e., Death-Resurrection) dynamic -- which IMO is the true dynamic of life. (We are in Frank Lake territory, but it's Greenwich Village and it's 1975.)

Oh, and the concluding track embodies the failure of the Law to create the response it intends -- Motown-fashion! LUV U.