Is Paul the new Jerry?

September 15th, 2005 by Monitor

Paul
According to the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian, the National Theatre has received 200 pre-emptive letters of complaint about its plans to stage Howard Brenton’s Paul. The theatre’s director, Nicholas Hytner, describes the play as “a secular hypothesis about the founding of a great religion”.

…it won’t be a comfortable or satisfactory play to a particular type of devout Christian

The type of Christian that makes threats of eternal torture on behalf of their deity:

…are all praying for me, and they are telling me I will go to hell unless I take the play off. I don’t mind, because I don’t believe in hell.

This has all the signs of being an organised campaign:

They are all kind of the same letter, all handwritten or typed. They all assume that the play is about Paul’s being homosexual and misogynist; they assume it’s going to be a prurient hatchet job.

But the play is not concerned with the sexuality of the misogynist who invented Christianity.

It’s a play about the nature of faith. Not a devout play, a sceptical play. It is not programmed in order to be controversial or shocking.


6 Responses to “Is Paul the new Jerry?”

  1. Marc says:
    15/Sep/2005 at 10:26 am

    Didn’t anyone else catch the Grand Inqusitor Green banging on about it on R4 yesterday. Jeez that guy is such a prick!

  2. tom p says:
    15/Sep/2005 at 10:46 am

    Yep, I heard him. The fucktard, he clearly didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, as per usual, and just wanted to make his general outrage felt

  3. Andy A says:
    15/Sep/2005 at 5:25 pm

    I’m surprised the silly twat is still taken seriously by the Beeb. I mean, once the media get the sniff that someone’s totally doolally, they tend to drop him/her and find someone else to be a spokesperson. But I suppose I’m forgetting that this is religion, and the BBC is the British Broadcasting Church.

  4. tom p says:
    15/Sep/2005 at 5:43 pm

    I think they were reporting on the fact that there had been about 200 pre-opening complaints, and who better to be interviewed about mindless complaints over things that one couldn’t possibly have seen than Stephen Green?

  5. Hector says:
    15/Sep/2005 at 9:19 pm

    The more they put the idiot on the air, the better. Surely no one can listen and take him (and by association, others of his ilk) seriously. Can they?

  6. tom p says:
    16/Sep/2005 at 9:51 am

    No intelligent person Hector, but there are an awful lot of idiots out there