Business Review – Magdalene

I thought about it for a few moments and concluded that I couldn’t be wrong, I was in fact being brought into a church. I entered through a secondary door, went to the box office and asked about my tickets. 

The young lady couldn’t seem to find my ticket. Uh oh, no Angel R, what’s going on here? Hmm, do you guys maybe have a special yelp group? Ahhh. Ok. There must of been some sort of miscommunication because she didn’t have any yelp tickets, but she was aware that we were somehow involved. She printed tickets for me then. 

While I waited outside for my wife, I eventually ran into some other friends, I even met a rather cool yelper’s papa. Heheh, cool. Yes I was on my best behavior around Papa Yelper. Lol. I did make a few seating jokes once inside, and snuck in a picture with my wife, thanks M, but it was quick and of no consequence. 

The theatre is very small and quite intimate. There is no bad seat in here. We were seated 3 rows in from the front, awesome seats. The seating was quite comfortable as well. We were able to see and hear everything perfectly. Thank you Yelp. 

I didn’t really know what to expect when we arrived, the description sounded as though this was a modernized story about Mary of Magdalene, with some hip fictitious and modern twist. 

I grew up Christian, Pentecostal in fact. So I know my sunday school literature rather well. This musical was not fictitious, well by that I mean it did keep with the teachings of the bible. They modernized the characters and their personas, but it was still quite accurate in the story telling. 

Not to my surprise, Yeshua was in the story. I mean I expected Jesus Christ to show up, but in some different way. He was introduced as a common shepherd who was initially arguing with Mary about her view of God. She eventually popped him right in the nose. That was actually funny. 

Mary was portrayed as a confused woman, struggling with life, and her future. She had short hair, a powerful will. She was no different than some women today, yet back in that time a woman speaking her mind was unheard of. 

One can argue that Mary started and paved the way for you beautiful ladies of today. Back in those days if you spoke out of term, they’d call you a harlot and so on. But Mary wasn’t having that, and that came across powerfully in this musical. 

The performance by the cast was very powerful, at one point when Jesus is crucified, the actress started to cry and weep, the mere thought of this perfomance overwhelms me as I type this up on the R train. Her pleas and yells of pain were so powerful! Even my wife who is not familiar with the gospel teared up at some points. 

I have to say, Governor Pilates was portrayed quite humorously. He was dressed up in modern garb, nice pants, shirt, a vest and sporting a gold medallion. To me he looked more like a slick, cool pimp rather than a Roman Governor. The actor brought a modern twist and coolness to the character that I never thought one could do. 

Whether or not you are familiar with Christian religion, I think you can enjoy this musical. The space is very small, the actors are very good, and this in my opinion can rival any musical I have seen to date on sheer talent and performance. 

Make no mistake though, this show is definitely a Christian story being told. But if you are not against learning about Jesus’ story, and enjoy watching talented folks singing and performing, this is definitely a nice show to watch.

Angel Rodriguez

Just a life long New Yorker sharing the journey through my lens. Please take note of a post’s date. The views I express here are subject to change and evolving as I grow and learn.