Tribe of Fools presents 'Magdalene'

Their project, seen in an earlier form in the 2016 SoLow Festival, draws on the overlooked Gnostic Gospels to explore the 13th apostle and only woman in Jesus’s inner circle. She was effectively erased from Christian history by Peter, founder of the Catholic Church, and in Magdalene, she’s still pissed about it 2,000 years later.

Righteous anger

She should be. Peter made women second-class citizens, as they still are today in Catholicism and the Roman Catholic Church structure. Hughes embodies Magdalene as an outspoken cynic who admits, “All I have are mysteries.”

She discusses her relationship with Jesus — whom she calls “the teacher” and her “best friend” — but is stingy with facts and personal anecdotes, telling us, “We will examine most of these teachings metaphorically.” We learn that wine flowed freely and dancing turned wild at the Last Supper. But the creators of Mary Magdalene have a larger agenda than restating Jesus’s views or recalling raucous parties.

Geffers’s production provides Magdalene with a large open space in her cave, defined by set and properties designer Doug Greene with a makeshift altar of books and a ring of gifts from visitors. Lighting designer Angela Myers employs many realistic-looking flickering candles and soft illumination to suggest a mystical place. Geffers’s sound provides an undercurrent of voices and music, memories bubbling up from Magdalene’s subconscious.

Hughes plays Magdalene with intensity, her blue eyes blazing even as she whispers to us or dances, trancelike. As with many Tribe of Fools’ productions, Magdalene is expressively physical, though much more poetic and sensual than the parkour exploits of Heavy Metal Dance Fag and Fishtown: A Hipster Noir.

Magdalene’s legacy

While Magdalene’s more complex cosmology was overthrown by Peter’s absolutism, Magdalene posits that, both literally and figuratively, she has survived all this time to inspire women. Instead of digging deeper into her biography, as I thought I wanted, Magdalene explores some women who have become their generation’s Magdalenes: a 20th-century Jewish art historian; a French woman raped by a German officer in World War I.

Hughes’s character, it turns out, is the historical Magdalene — and isn’t. Or, rather, the historical Magdalene endures through many women.

They’re all connected by a sense of responsibility to make the world better. “Magdalenes wind up here,” Hughes explains, “when the world seems impossible to repair.” This year seems a fine time for a Magdalene, and this fascinating hourlong Magdalene provides hope that our fractured world is not beyond repair.