Epic is the buzzword in regional theatre at the moment, and spaces don't come bigger than the new main stage at Northern Stage. It's so vast it makes you blink. You could put the Alps on it and throw in a few elephants, and you would still have room to stage a revolution. It's a good thing, because the inaugural production from artistic director Erica Whyman tells the story of a man who was certainly a revolutionary, and who may have been the son of God.
Using Dennis Potter's famous 1969 TV script, Whyman and her cast offer up a Jesus who, living under Roman rule, becomes a figurehead for the discontent of a people who long for a messiah to free them and gathers around him a group of fanatical young male followers.
Busy conducting his own war against terror and faced with an increasingly rebellious population, the canny Pontius Pilate recognises the danger that this Jesus poses: "An idea is stronger than an army and more enduring than an empire." Potter's script may seem startlingly modern in some ways, but demonstrating the frail, human side of Jesus and portraying him as a leader shaped by the political and social circumstances of an oppressed people is hardly novel. For much of the evening the piece lacks the theatrical muscle necessary to escape its small-screen origins.
The writing is often flat and you can't help feeling that the internal wars that rage within the thin, shivering frame of Scott Handy's Jesus would be far more effective if shown close up. Handy is undeniably charismatic, and he is matched by Adrian Schiller's clever and deeply flawed Pontius Pilate, but new stages demand new approaches and Whyman's slow production, which lacks fluidity and focus, suggests that she has yet to entirely get to grips with the space. This never comes close to being the passion play that it could and should be.
· Until September 23. Box office: 0191 230 5151.
