Review: JEEZUS! (New Diorama Theatre)

Review by Matthew Plampton

⭐️

A comedy musical exploring faith, queerness, and political repression sounds like a perfect theatrical mix. This is the premise of JEEZUS!, a new musical from Alpaq, arriving at New Diorama Theatre following a 2025 Untapped Award and Fringe acclaim. From the moment the house lights dim, its intentions are unmistakable: stained-glass church windows are styled with dildos and butt-plugs, whilst a crucifix fashioned as a sex toy hangs from the ceiling. But would this self-described "sinful cocktail" of live music and unrepentant queerness deliver daring satire, or simply mistake shock for wit? Unfortunately, the answer is emphatically the latter, and the wink curdles into a weary leer within minutes.

Set in 1990s Peru under Alberto Fujimori's dictatorship, altar boy Jesús is preparing for his first communion in the home of General José and his devout wife María when confusing feelings for the man on the cross begin to surface. What follows is Jesús grappling with his sexuality and religion through a series of up-tempo ‘comedy’ numbers.  In practice, however, the comedy defaults to smut and shock-for-shock's sake, with set-pieces that exhaust rather than illuminate.

The book and lyrics (Sergio Antonio Maggiolo and Guido Garcia Lueches) are riddled with obvious innuendo and groan-worthy ba-dum-tish moments. There are lines about altar boys being "needy for the body of Christ", sacramental gags about being "clean before the Lord comes inside us", and a dictatorship quip split across syllables to salvage a titter where a proper joke should be. The piece delights in saying the unsayable, yet confuses being explicit with being funny. Where it needs economy and precision, it opts for crass wordplay and winks to the crowd.

Most troubling is how the show packages its provocation. The story is explicitly framed around the lead-up to a first communion; by definition, the central character is underage, and that context is not incidental window dressing. If the intention was for the character to read as older, this is never made sufficiently clear to the audience. Across the (specific and deliberate)  69 minutes, set-pieces invite laughter at sexualised scenarios involving a minor; from graphic sex with a dildo crucifix, to confessional abuse played as a punchline. There is a clear line between interrogating religious hypocrisy and inviting an audience to chortle at sexual material involving someone underage; this staging steps over it and then doubles down, which is wrong both artistically and ethically.

That failing hurts all the more because the intentions seem, at least nominally, sincere. The makers say the piece is not here to mock religion but to wrestle with it, with its contradictions, and the conditions it places on love. Those ambitions could have yielded a witty, thorny argument about power, religion, and the queer body under authoritarianism. Instead, Catholicism is reduced to puerile iconography gags and gay identity to dated stereotypes, with little of substance left standing once the noise subsides.

To their credit, the performers work hard. Sergio Antonio Maggiolo and Guido Garcia Lueches switch characters with energy and passion, while Tom Cagnoni drives the on-stage sound with a buoyant blend of Latin pop and reggaeton-inflected beats. The songs, however, rarely deepen characters or advance the plot; they sit on top of the gags rather than adding anything meaningful, functioning as additions rather than engines.

It bears saying that outrageous parody and bad-taste glee can be navigated with precision and purpose; Titanique and The Producers prove that shock, when marshalled into actual satire, can be exhilarating rather than exhausting. It can be done, just not here. There are two flashes of the sharper, sillier show this might have been. A knowingly daft line mocks the Last Supper's staging, asking “why did they all sit on one side of the table?”, and a blasphemy exclamation of Jesus shouting "Oh my Dad!" lands cleanly without a sneer. Briefly, the audience is allowed to enjoy a joke rather than endure one. Then the production reverts to type, and the moment is gone.

Ultimately, JEEZUS! is a deeply troubling misfire that mistakes vulgarity for humour. The performers commit, but the material and direction are so wayward that they smother any potential story this piece is trying to tell. When the dust settles, what remains is not daring queer theatre.

JEEZUS! plays at New Diorama Theatre until 9th May. Tickets and full credits at Home | New Diorama 

Photos by Alex Brenner