Peter CostelloSean Walsh was formerly head of drama on radio at RTÉ. He has written a set of three plays about the events of Good Friday which adopts the unusual device of keeping Jesus off stage, and focusing on the ordinary people of the day, Roman officials, prisoners, the condemned. It is always difficult to see how plays might be in performance, but these are not (on the page least least) completely successful. A different kind of Passion drama, but is seems to me that he is off the track both historically and theologically. It is all too easy to adopt the view of the Romans as colonisers ñ this was not the case: Judea under its native rulers was a vassal state. Pilate as the representative of the emperor could not do anything else but condemn Jesus ñ there was no other choice. As regards the suggestion that anti-Semitism arises from the events on Good Friday, we should bear in mind that the voice of those before the praetorium rejecting Jesus was the voice, not of Judaism, but of humanity as a whole; they were not speaking for the Jews, so to speak, but for Sean Walsh. In these plays the dramatic and the deeper issues in the drama of the Passion remain unresolved, perhaps even unexplored. P.C.
