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Reviews Update
Here's a selection of press reviews of Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5:

Petrol Jesus Nightmare is a play which has found both its time and its place… Joseph Thompson’s enraged Yosariat and Susan Vidler’s decadent widow are superb. (SUNDAY HERALD)

As a bold and graphic snapshot of the confrontation between crazed ideological belief and the ordinary business of human survival, the play leaves a fierce impression on the mind. James Cunningham and Aleksandar Mikic are magnificent through out as the two junior soldiers trapped in other people’s grand designs, but remaining as human, resigned, ironic, realistic and desperate as life in the war zone itself. (THE SCOTSMAN)

Written with a cynical eye for black humour and played with a real understanding of how those in extreme circumstances themselves become extreme. Indeed, it neither condemns nor supports either side of the conflict, thanks to a couple of effortless, near-perfect performances.
(EDINBURGH EVENING NEWS)

Adam’s writing is supple, poetic and punchy and the performances are powerful. (SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY)

The central confrontation between the Texan and the Rabbi’s wife is riveting, two fine actors (Susan Vidler, as the wife, is a real tigress) giving each other both barrels at close range. (THE TIMES)

Adam has kicked off the Traverse’s Fringe season with a bang, and then some... Adam and director Philip Howard have created a slow-burning morality tale akin to a more claustrophobic The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but with oil and religion as excuses for greed. Adam’s dialectal whirlwind has James Cunningham and Aleksandar Mikic’s testosterone charged grunts caught in the crossfire by Lewis Howden’s Texan and the prospect of what Susan Vidler’s Rabbi’s Wife can offer, and there are moments of shocking relevance and banter. (THE HERALD)

its darkly surreal spirit somehow feels true to our perturbing times… it’s well served by a committed cast, especially Lewis Howden as the smug evangelical and Joseph Thompson as Yossariat, sliding inexorably from self-restraint to malevolence. (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

FEATURE INTERVIEWS
Read two full interviews with Henry Adam, the writer of Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5:
The Scotsman website
http://living.scotsman.com/people.cfm?id=1063082006
The Herald website
www.theherald.co.uk/features/66471.html


In the time of the Messiah, everything is permitted.

The zealots are gathering, the city burns. The final war is coming - but no one told the men on the ground. Holed up in a ransacked building in the heart of occupied territory, two Israeli soldiers are caught under fire: Buddy and Slomo hold their ground, soldiers soldiering, keeping back the Caliphate the only way they know how.

But the real danger emerges from behind their back when two wholly unexpected visitors take refuge: a Texan in a Stetson and the widow of a rabbi - fresh from a disastrous morning in Jerusalem, and chaperoned by the young captain Yossariat.

Yossariat is having a bad day. A very, very bad day.

Forced together, at the frontier between earth and heaven, the visitors’ true motives become clear...

Petrol Jesus Nightmare #5 (In the Time of the Messiah) is an apocalyptic vision of a new world order fuelled by faith, politics and dollars.

Henry Adam was born in Wick, Caithness. His last Traverse Theatre production The People Next Door won Fringe First and Herald Angel awards at the 2003 Festival. It has since toured Scotland, England, Germany, the Balkans and New York. Other plays include: Among Unbroken Hearts (Traverse/Bush; Meyer Whitworth Award Winner 2002), When the Dons were Kings (The Lemon Tree, Aberdeen); An Clo Mor (Theatre Highland); Millenium - Angels of Paris (His Majesty’s, Aberdeen); The Widow (Sharp Shorts, Traverse Theatre); The Abattoir (Mobil Scottish Playwriting Competition Winner).

Director Philip Howard
Designer Soutra Gilmour
Lighting Designer Charles Balfour
Sound Designer Graham Sutherland
Cast James Cunningham, Lewis Howden, Aleksandar Mikic, Joseph Thompson, Susan Vidler

(Image: Anna Crolla featuring Joseph Thompson as Yossariat)

“Don’t tell me you don’t feel it. Don’t tell me that you don’t think we’re living through the final days. This world is accelerating out of control.”