The Devil's Passion or Easter in Hell

Book excerpt: Within the next hour, our operatives will isolate, engage and capture or kill the notorious leader of the most extreme, dangerous and contagious ideology to emerge in the modern era, whose terror activities represent the gravest threat to our interests across the region and the wider world. I refer, of course, to the radical preacher and populist demagogue Y'shua Bar-Yessuf – the man known, by way of shorthand to our operatives, as “Jesus”. Satan, the narrator of Justin Butcher's one-man play who is looking out for our best interests, is on a mission to harness the ways of the dangerous extremist preacher Jesus. Jesus' radical teachings and popularity have the potential to wreak havoc in the Middle East. This is exactly the sort of man the government warn us of, again and again. This clever and evocative passion play from the devil's perspective considers Jesus' relevance to contemporary issues, and retells the story of Christ's life from the perspective of the enemy. The Devil's Passion received its world premiere in June 2015 at St James's, Piccadilly, and was revived and toured in 2016.