The Gospel at Colonus by Lee Breuer

First published: 1989

First produced: 1983, at the New Wave Festival, Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York

Type of plot: Musical

Time of work: Ancient Greece and the late twentieth century United States

Locale: Ancient Greece and a black Pentecostal church service

Principal Characters:

• Black Preacher, a contemporary religious figure who doubles as a Greek messenger
• Oedipus, the ancient Greek literary character who doubles as a gospel singer
• Antigone, and
• Ismene, Oedipus’s daughters, the princesses of Thebes
• Creon, king of Thebes
• Theseus, king of Colonus
• Polyneices, Oedipus’s son, the prince of Thebes

The Play

The Gospel at Colonus is a curious blend of the ancient Greek drama of Sophocles and a modern gospel musical. The text is an adaptation of Sophocles’ Oidipous epi Kolōnōi (401 b.c.e.; Oedipus at Colonus, 1729), the second play in the cycle of the Theban Trilogy, although it makes references to certain occurrences in both Oidipous Tyrannos (c. 429 b.c.e.; Oedipus Tyrannus, 1715) and Antigonē (441 b.c.e.; Antigone, 1729). The immediate setting of The Gospel at Colonus is a black Pentecostal church service, where the play opens with the black preacher taking the text for his sermon from the “Book of Oedipus.” Through flashback, musical performance, and dance, the audience is transported back in time to the suffering of Oedipus, the King of Thebes’ self-imposed banishment from his home city, and his difficult journey in search of sanctuary. Oedipus’s journey and his constant suffering are dramatized in the audience’s imagination as the Pentecostal preacher re-creates the classic story of redemption through suffering.

The first scene shows Oedipus on the road, accompanied by his younger daughter, Antigone, as he approaches the gates of Colonus, the city in which he will ultimately be granted a resting place. Although the townspeople attempt to refuse his entry out of fear that his sins will infect them, Oedipus is granted entry to the city by King Theseus, himself a victim of angry gods and thus sympathetic to Oedipus’s needs. Ismene, Oedipus’s elder daughter, arrives from Thebes with the news that he is now welcome to return to Thebes, but Oedipus refuses. In the meantime, Creon, the present ruler of Thebes, who is also the brother-in-law and uncle of Oedipus, arrives to persuade Oedipus to return to his home city, fully aware that the Delphic oracle has prophesied that the city that grants Oedipus a final resting place will forever prosper. Oedipus refuses the invitation, and in an effort to force Oedipus to return to Thebes, Creon kidnaps Oedipus’s daughters. Theseus speaks movingly of Oedipus’s plight and vows not to rest until he restores Oedipus’s daughters to him.

Shortly after Oedipus’s arrival at Colonus, he is visited by Polyneices, one of his two warring sons. Polyneices has been driven from Thebes by his brother Eteocles and has traveled to Argos to raise an army to attack his home city. Polyneices asks for his father’s blessing in battle, but Oedipus rebukes him for his foolish fighting and for his refusal to help his father when he had the chance. Shortly thereafter, Theseus keeps his promise and returns Antigone and Ismene to Oedipus and grants Oedipus official sanctuary in the city of Colonus. There Theseus presides over Oedipus’s death, a siutation in which he is caught up in a whirlwind, a Pentecostal rapture. Thus Oedipus gains his final resting place in peace though he has suffered endlessly.

Flashbacks are interspersed with the contemporary preacher’s sermon, and, as the sermon builds to its high point, it is augmented by gospel music. At the end of the play, a catharsis is experienced, and the shout—the Pentecostal “holy dance”—is performed as the audience’s emotions are purged of pity and fear, as they were in ancient Greece upon Oedipus’s rapturous death. Indeed, the audience—both that of the play and that of the preacher—understands that if there was a celebration of Oedipus’s triumph over intense and long-term suffering, then it can happen for them as well.

Dramatic Devices

The most obvious dramatic device employed in The Gospel at Colonus is the use of flashback. Even as the preacher mounts the podium to begin his sermon, the impulse to “look back” is present. Thus, as the preacher introduces his text from the Book of Oedipus, he begins to draw the picture of the once mighty King of Thebes, who is brought down so that he might be exalted, or “saved” in the Christian context. At one juncture, obviously to impart to the congregation just how low Oedipus was brought, the preacher recounts how Oedipus blinded himself by plunging the golden brooches from his wife/mother’s garments into his eyes so that he could look no more on the sins he had committed. The power of such imagery is palpable for the audiences—the one listening to the sermon within the play, as well as the one experiencing the play.

The Greek Chorus, represented in The Gospel at Colonus by two gospel-singing choruses, is also an important dramatic device in its function as the Aristotelian notion of the ideal spectator and in the role of a contemporary gospel chorus. In the former sense, the two groups often provide point-counterpoint or strophe-antistrophe in order to give the audience different views of the same incident and to advance the plot by illustrating the preacher’s next point in the text. The fact that both choruses are singing the same song at the end of the play confirms and underscores the play’s important theme of reconciliation. In the latter sense, the choruses keep the play moving and add resonance to the preacher’s intonations, functioning in the same manner as a church choir does in the black religious tradition.

The amphitheater-style seating of the audiences replicate the ancient Greek outdoor amphitheater, which creates a sense of verisimilitude as the spectators view the action of the play down below. The similar seating arrangement of the church congregation in the play itself not only replicates the actual arrangement of the churchgoers as they view the dramatic performance of their preacher, but also suggests a connection between the form and content of the ancient and contemporary. This fact is underscored as the interior audience—the church congregation—interacts in a call-and-response manner with the preacher in the play, and as the exterior audience—the theatergoers—respond to Oedipus’s plight as it is dramatized onstage. Moreover, because all elements, including the external audience, interact with one another in the grand finale of the musical—the catharsis and the exodus—the author’s unique vision of reconciliation once again resonates with all who witness The Gospel at Colonus.

Critical Context

Even before its formal debut at the New Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 1983, The Gospel at Colonus reached a number of enthusiastic workshop audiences in the United States and England. Its energy, its unique and intriguing blend of seemingly opposing traditions, and its moving conclusion offered audiences a fresh experience and drew rave reviews from the critics. Although many saw the play as one in a long line of gospel musicals, it is clear to the discerning reviewer that The Gospel at Colonus transcends that genre in accomplishing what interviewer Patrick Pacheco called “a song of joyous affirmation.” In fact, Lee Breuer says of the play, “It’s not a gospel show, but gospel music is used as an inspiration for re-creating a classic Greek experience, and I believe it is the correct metaphor for our time.”

Audiences and critics alike agreed with Breuer. Among the praise offered by the critics, Alan Rich noted in Newsweek that the play was “a great theatrical exultation, a jiving, shouting, hand clapping celebration.” Jack Kroll, also from Newsweek, observed that The Gospel at Colonus is “a triumph of reconciliation, bringing together black and white, pagan and Christian, ancient and modern in a sunburst of joy that seems to touch the secret heart of civilization itself.” Awards for the play included the 1984 Obie Award for best musical, the ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers) Popular Music Award, and the United Gospel Association Award. When The Gospel at Colonus moved to Lunt-Fontanne Theater on Broadway for a two-month run in 1988, praise continued, although the play was less than a financial success. Perhaps the most penetrating critical viewpoint of The Gospel at Colonus was offered by Mimi Gisolfi D’Aponte, in Black American Literature Forum, who argued that “the most telling measurement (of the play’s success) is of the psychic space opened up in American theater when the marriage of Black Pentecostal ritual and Greek ritual took place in a musical theater event.”

Clearly, The Gospel at Colonus was a theater event in offering a fresh look on an old story; a story which is worth preserving, and a contemporary vision that is worth sharing. According to an anonymous reviewer of Atlanta’s Alliance Theater production, “The Gospel at Colonus is galvanizing theater . . . both a gigantic theatrical experiment and a return to roots, a celebration and an affirmation of faith.”

Sources for Further Study

D’Aponte, Mimi Gisolfi. “The Gospel at Colonus (And Other Black Morality Plays).” Black American Literature Forum 25 (Spring, 1991): 101-111.

DeVries, Hilary. “A Song in Search of Itself.” American Theater 3, no. 10 (1987): 22-25.

Feingold, Michel. “Gospel Truth.” Village Voice, November 22, 1983, p. 109.

Gussow, Mel. “Colonus Mixes Songs with Sophocles.” New York Times, November 12, 1983, p. 12.

Kroll, Jack. “An Oedipal Jamboree.” Newsweek, April 4, 1988, 75.

Rich, Alan. “Oedipus Jones.” Newsweek, November 21, 1983, 105, 107.

Rich, Frank. “A Musical of Sophocles and Pentecostalism.” New York Times, March, 25, 1988, p. C5.