In its best moments, The Holy Sinner showed us fleeting and random flashes of beautiful set design; in its worst moments – which unfortunately comprised the bulk of the performance – The Holy Sinner was simply and inescapably bad theatre.

The tale for this overly long and self-indulgent production is taken loosely from Thomas Mann’s novel, and tells the story of fated incest.  The infant son of a set of fraternal twins is outcast, eventually returns to the duchy of his widowed mother, vanquishes her foe, and is rewarded with her hand in marriage.  Upon discovery of the truth, he banishes himself to ‘the most desolate place on Earth’ (which, in this production, one gets to by rowing halfway across the stage in a boat on casters and in very shallow water), but he is, in the climatic scene of the play, rescued from there by two cardinals who have dreamt of this man as the next pope.

But this story barely emerges at all in the current production.  The narrative – and anything we might want to attach to it or find it – gets lost among the inconsistent acting, the abrasive (and not at all complimentary) soundtrack, the frequent and unnecessary set changes, and most of all, the utterly destructive love affair that the show’s creators, Marie Adams and Mike Mizrahi, have with theatrical technology.  They gave us a mobile, multi-level scaffold set and giant red curtains; we had fog, and video projections, and flames and sparks that shot up from beneath the apron; there was a massive rock to which the sinner banished himself, and ‘rain’ and snow that descended there upon him in his darkest hours.  Adams and Mizrahi are technological wizards.  But, in this instance, they were not story tellers, and they were not theatre directors.

Nor do I think it apt to praise even their technological abilities.  Neither the impressive stage design nor the special effects actually served the rest of the production in any substantial way.  On the contrary, the effort (especially in terms of set changes) that went into managing these effects inhibited the flow of the story and prohibited the creation of any emotion or dramaturgical impact other than frustration.  The scaffolding, though on casters, was awkward and laborious to move; fires were lit and then unceremoniously put out; a set piece with the sinner and his mother/aunt/wife enclosed within was raised above the stage, twirled, and then set down; the sprinkler spouted out streams of water that looked far less like rain and far more like something that would extinguish all those fires that were randomly appearing.  Over and over, an effect would appear, do little or nothing, and then get removed; such was the structure and substance of the performance.

As I left The Holy Sinner, I felt almost as if Adams and Mizrahi had (probably unwittingly) mocked their audience, and had certainly, thoughtlessly, squandered that which had been given them by both their audiences and their backers.  For both viewers and supporters (and here I mean CNZ, corporate sponsorship, the Festival itself), time, energy, and money are scarce.  And if the critique above seems overly harsh or even angry, it is because the production left me with a sense of anger, of frustration, and of wondering where we might have more productively focused our limited resources. 

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You couldn’t get a bigger contrast than the heart-felt simplicity and quality storytelling of Page 8 and the overblown, flashy and incomprehensible production of The Holy Sinner. It looks a million dollars (and rumour has it cost even more to produce) and America’s Cup party planner Mike Mizrahi and Marie Adams have incorporated pretty much every stage SFX in the book. Visually it’s astounding and it is refreshing to see a New Zealand production produced on a grand scale.

The opportunity, however, is badly squandered in terms of telling a New Zealand story (a brief mention of Ten Guitars and inclusion of a Maori Warrior don’t qualify) or even a good story. Think Vincent Ward and Peter Greenaway collaborating on a medieval stage play – beautiful yet unfathomable. It’s bloated (half an hour longer than the programmed time) with long waffly on-stage scenes of things like extended fish spitting (for heaven’s sake!) to allow, presumably, set up for the substantial scene changes. If the audience is in any doubt that this tale of double incest is not a serious look at religion and redemption but a lame satire go no further than the final moment – a cheesy tableau followed by a marching girls’ routine.

The actors worked hard but even they didn’t really seem to understand what was going on. Grant Major’s set design looked spectacular, as you’d expect from a multi-Oscar winner and Tracey Collins’ were stunning – but how many times did we have to watch actors run across the stage so we could admire their flowing cloaks? A pretentious waste of three hours.

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From its humble beginnings 16 years ago in Auckland, Inside Out Productions The Holy Sinner now soars out over the Westpac St James Theatre stage like some great Wagnerian opera, an epic production of an epic tale.

Based on a novel by Thomas Mann of the same name, the story of Wiligis/Gregorius (Cliff Curtis) and Sibylla (Mia Blake) and their journey of forbidden love, deception, lies and then ultimately redemption and transformation, is visually one of the most sunning productions so far this Festival.

Directors Marie Adams and Mike Mizahi and their design team of Grant Major and Bob Buck have created an amazing set that moves in and out and around from scene to scene effortlessly, the array of earthy hues of greys and browns capturing beautifully the medieval tones of Mann’s story all wonderfully enhanced by Keith Ballantyne’s incredibly evocative soundscape. 

However such is the enormity of this amazing staging that the poor actors become submerged and dwarfed by all the visual effects, especially in the first half, where the slow and even pace of the production makes it difficulty for the audience to engage in the underlying tension and emotions that are running through the story. 

In the second half the action picks up and as a consequence the pace does as well, creating moments of real drama and emotional intensity, unfortunately destroyed by the Disney style cartoon ending which for no apparent reasons has a group of cheesy marching girls parading around the stage. 

Up to this point the actors all give very creditable performances, Madeleine Sami particularly outstanding as the Narrator/Maid /Mother.

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What the …? Why would you do that? Mesmerise your audience for two-plus hours with a medieval epic sweep through classic mythology, liberally sprinkled with earthy and insightful humour, then piss it all up against the wall with a fatuous finale? I have to cancel that last image in order to re-engage with what went before, but I will return to it to ask again: why?

Warning: This is a review of record. If you’re going but haven’t yet seen it, this may reveal more than you wish to know beforehand.

The source material is one of German writer Thomas Mann’s last works: The Holy Sinner (1951). Mann uses a medieval legend about "the exceeding mercy of God and the birth of the blessed Pope Gregory" (seen as the true founder of the Early Medieval papacy) to bring his ironic sensibility and elegant mockery to the notion of original sin and the transcendence of evil. While at one level it can be seen as a tale of "transfiguration by divine mercy," according to Lewis Vogler in the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review, it can also be seen as, "a brilliantly erudite spoofing of medieval superstition and the traditions of chivalry – for which the author obviously has so great an affection." In the New York Times Book Review, Stephen Spender declared it, "A small masterpiece" and "a triumph of art indistinguishable from moral sensibility which makes the miraculous, most incredible part of the story … the most convincing."

The fabled apple – fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil – makes a number of appearances during this Inside Out Productions/New Zealand International Arts Festival remounting of the show that reignited Auckland theatre in 1990 (then wowed New Zealand Festival of the Arts audiences in 1994 and won a Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for most original production of the year). Greek mythology is also invoked as the children of so-called nobility succumb to brother-sister incest (Zeus and Hera), son-mother incest (Oedipus) and atonement for such sins by being chained to an ocean-thrashed rock (Prometheus).

So why have directors Marie Adams and Mike Mizrahi decided to revisit this material now, in 2006? Is it because the rhetoric of Good versus Evil has re-entered the world stage with a vengeance? These are the sorts of questions that drift into my consciousness as my other senses engage with their epic staging, powerfully performed by fifteen actors in a stark medieval wilderness created by designers Grant Major (set), Tracey Collins (art direction), Bob Buck (costume) and Bryan Caldwell (lighting), engulfed in the stunning musical compositions of Keith Ballantyne with Link Audio.

The action is largely non-verbal yet rich and clear in content. As a cold wind blows, church bells ring and monks and nuns climb or descend a vast wooden grid to cloister themselves in cubicles. The grid gives way to open space through which people run. At a distant high table, in front of an enormous distressed wall back-cloth, the people gather to raise their goblets to Duke Grimald (Bruce Hopkins) and his Duchesss (Angela Shirley), and a Maid (Madeline Sami) tells us, in Everywoman Cockney tones, that they have no children. More than once she will end her conjectures, "But what would I know? It’s not my place to say."

Recurring images of copulation, prayer and awaiting the miracle of conception – dwarfed by massive red curtains; subsumed by a pulsating heartbeat – culminate in the spectacular birth of Glad-wrapped twins, Sibylla (Mia Blake) and Wiligis (Cliff Curtis). Their mother dies and ascends into heaven, their father takes to drink and they take to each other with child-like glee until their affectionate play-fighting is nipped – too late? – in the all-too-burgeoning bud by the maids. Sibylla’s affection for their Dad alienates Wiligis and a parade of unsuitable suitors for her hand makes the Duke so apoplectic, he dies. The siblings’ mutual grief proves an aphrodisiac and they commit their terrible sin. Now they are the Lord and Lady and, amid the redness and heartbeat, she finds herself pregnant. "Why didn’t you tell me?" she wants to know. "I didn’t know!" her brother/lover/Lord replies. Apparently their teachers weren’t into apples.

Wiligis makes Sibylla promise to put herself in God’s hands while he banishes himself to do God’s work. When the baby is born she sets it adrift in a basket, with an inscribed tablet, on the turbulent tide – powerfully created with video projection onto black scrim. We take a break awash with the scale of the tale so far (although there are grumbles about the poor sound balance for some of the spoken word and I have been dismayed to be distracted, during a low-lit scene of high drama, by a distant backstage door opening to a bright-lit corridor).

When figures descend slowly into what looks like the Devil’s workshop, I’m thinking we’re relocating to Hades but it turns out to be fishermen going to work (theatrical indulgence? I can’t help wondering). An Abbot (Ian Hughes) comes a-begging for alms in the shape of a nice big fish and the baby-in-the-basket is duly found. He is passed to a foul-mouthed nursing Fisherwoman (Alison Bruce). Her uncouth natural son, Flan (Cameron Rhodes), and Gregorius (Curtis) metamorphose into men. "The spitting image of his father," Sami’s incidental Everywoman quips, in an Irish accent now. Much roughhousing between the brothers (including Jeff Szusterman & David van Horn), at home and at the fish works, ensues.

When the Abbot picks him out for higher education it alienates Gregorius even more from his bros, makes him aware he’s an outcast and foundling, and leads him to ask the big questions: "Why me? For what purpose have you saved me, Lord?" Under what he believes is God’s guidance he finds his way back home, where Goatbeard (Kirk Torrance), a 17 years-rejected suitor-turned-bad, is in the process of demolishing Sibylla’s armies. Gregorius vanquished Goatbeard. Now victory is the aphrodisiac – Oedipus rides again – and now I’m wondering how come she didn’t recognise him, if he’s the image of his father/her brother? But the people toast the Lord and Lady, the apple-polishing servants gossip … and through his tireless questing (also like Oedipus) the awful truth is revealed. Now it’s Gregorius who claims he didn’t know, tells his wife/mother to open her heart and practise humility (she tends to lepers) and sets forth to find the most desolate place on earth to live out the rest of his days in atonement.

Everywoman is Scottish now, in the guise of a woman whose Fisherman husband (Mark Clare) berates the crawling Gregorius with a vitriolic Rogernomics rave about his expecting a handout when everyone else has to work for a living. He’s only too happy to chain the penitent Gregorius to a rock in the ocean where the ruthless elements may or may not cleanse his soul. Meanwhile in Rome, two Cardinals (Szusterman & Rhodes) share their revelations via a visionary lamb, conclude the next Pope will be Gregory, and set out to find him. The final image has a halo-topped Gregorius (bloody fast sanctification, I’m thinking) at the peak of his rock surrounded by the whole cast, all bathed in heavenly light: their curtain-call tableau. An opportunity to contemplate the question of redemption in the light of religious belief and practice … Is this a manifestation or corruption of Goodness? Will Everywoman deliver a punch-line to her "what would I know – it’s not my place to say" set up? Cue a rousing Gregorian chant, perhaps?

No way. It’s fatuous finale time. Suddenly The Stars and Stripes Forever is blaring from the sound system and a squad of Marching Girls invades the stage. What the …? Why …? My initial reaction is to laugh, clap along and assume I’ll get it in due course. But the more I think about it, the more cranky I get. When this happened 12 years ago the audience was so grateful that establishment theatre had been so fantastically challenged, they were not about to let this aberration spoil it for them. Now, for me at least, it has to mean something. It has to add a bonus to the investment of time, attention, intellect and emotion the audience has invested, on trust.

I try my best to draw a connection from Greek mythology through medieval Christianity and the fundamentalist religious practices that dominate current political landscape, to this presumably ironic display of pro-USA patriotic bombast … But the leap is too great. It has no meaning other than to tell those who engaged with the show’s deeper levels that we’re stupid to have got sucked in, that The Holy Sinner‘s only purpose is to show the world how clever its makers are. The Greeks called it hubris. Freud called it egotism. On opening night I heard one audience member call it a wank.

I realise that in the years since Sinner opened, with that same wacky ending, Inside Out Productions has made it big in the Corporate and sporting arenas with world-class shows (see http://www.iop.co.nz/ ). They have constantly been affirmed for delivering shock-and-awe visual spectacle, humour and surprise for their own sakes. But this is theatre. A different deal. I want stamp my foot like an officious Shortland Street matron and snap, "You’re not at Ericsson Stadium now, directors Adams and Mizrahi."

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Marie Adams and Mike Mizrahi, who are Inside Out Productions, put on their first adaptation of Thomas Mann’s The Holy Sinner in an Auckland warehouse in 1990. This was Holy Sinner mark 3: dynamic, passionate and compelling, but also quirky and at times outright comic.

Adams’s and Mizrahi’s specialty is visual, physical theatre with the minimum of dialogue. Here the story and its medieval world were almost entirely evoked by movement, gesture, sound, props. Music pounded robotically or soared in broken hallelujahs. Characters dashed about or caroused raucously. Huge red curtains, a throbbing heartbeat, suggested the womb. Scaffolding swung forward to present tiers of monks in cells. Twins were born, sliding down a chute, writhing and clutching, viscous in plastic wrap. A tale of sin, penance and redemption, and then more sin, penance and redemption, rapidly unfolded (though not nearly as rapidly as the timing in the programme claimed).

The sin is incest: Les enfants terribles crossed with Oedipus. Twins Wiligis and Sibylla have a son Gregorius. Wiligis dies at the Crusades; Gregorius is set adrift by Sibylla. Later Gregorius returns and, unknowingly, sleeps with his mother Sibylla. Sibylla devotes herself to helping lepers; Gregorius lives alone on a desolate rock for 17 years seeking redemption till he is unexpectedly made Pope. With all its pace and breathtaking theatrics, the production understood the ironic tone of Mann’s novel about incest and divine election.

Mann, as a knowledgeable friend explained to me, was not a believer, but was fascinated by unconventional sexuality and chosen outsiders (the novel’s title in German literally means "The Chosen One"). Cliff Curtis (doubling as Wiligis/Gregorius) and Mia Blake (Sibylla) gave the incestuous couples plenty of sexual intensity (to the accompaniment of long-tailed devils, hellish jets of fire and belches of steam).

Curtis, on a brief break from Hollywood, also provided considerable pathos in the penitential scenes and showed a nice comic touch throughout. Because for all the gravity of its theme, The Holy Sinner (like Mann’s original) was always playfully serious. Undercutting the Sturm und Drang were Madeleine Sami’s Maid, an earthy Cockney chorus, and Cameron Rhodes’s Flan, Gregorius’s hilariously resentful foster brother, among the fisherfolk who bring him up.

Finally, as a dazzling halo descended above Gregorius’s head, his papacy was marvellously, miraculously, ludicrously endorsed by the appearance of a squad of marching girls. As they wheeled and saluted, a strange elation took hold of the absorbed audience.

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