The King James Bible Play at Stratford is a powerful treatise on the act of translation

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• Title: The King James Bible Play
• Written by: Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman
• Directed by: Nina Lee Aquino
• Actors: Cyrus Lane, Deborah Hay, Vivien Endicott-Douglas, Steven Hao, Rylan Wilkie, Sara Topham, Liz Der, Angel Lo, Gray Powell, Michael Spencer-Davis
• Company: Stratford Festival
• Venue: Studio Theatre
• City: Stratford, Ont.
• Year: Runs until Sept. 26

Critic’s Pick

In the early 17th century, Britain’s greatest status symbol wasn’t a Birkin or a Rolex. It was about the size of a football, with a leafy green crown and spiky outer shell. And even if you had one, you likely had no idea how it tasted – the object was too precious, too indicative of disposable wealth, to waste on something as base as eating.

I’m speaking, of course, about the pineapple.

The King James Bible Play, Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman’s piercing exploration of the act of translation, is much like a pineapple itself. On the outside, it’s peculiar – confounding, even – and not helped by its weaker second act, where a play-within-a-play mechanism further complicates the first half’s telling of how the modern Bible came to be.

But when The King James Bible Play reveals its fleshy belly – its meditations on the true cost of constructing a mythology, and its thoughtful examination of the human stakes of sacrificing one’s life for their work – it’s sweet as can be. Structural cavils aside, Corbeil-Coleman’s play uses a small, sizzling slice of history to argue in favour of hope for the future, and as such, the work lands like a comet returned to Earth: decisive, and dazzlingly bright.

Corbeil-Coleman, who is married to a Globe and Mail journalist, starts The King James Bible Play with a familiar fruit. When we first descend on Sir Henry Savile’s working chambers, we meet a rented pineapple, stored lovingly in a gilded, tufted box.

Savile (the ever-excellent Cyrus Lane) has little interest in eating the fruit, or even in cutting it open: It is decorative, a symbol of prosperity rather than nourishment for the men tasked by the king with translating a new edition of the Good Book.

We soon meet Savile’s crew of adapters: George Abbot (Rylan Wilkie, outstanding), John Bois (Gray Powell) and John Perrin (Michael Spencer-Davis). Also in the room is Savile’s adolescent son Willie (Steven Hao, in his most beguiling Stratford Festival appearance yet), who’s been hired to take notes while the older men debate the finer points of Greek syntax.

Corbeil-Coleman’s snapshot of 17th-century male camaraderie couldn’t feel more contemporary – or less clichéd. The King James Bible Play’s first act bursts with empathy for the men at its centre, and offers a tender look at how each real-life writer might have envisioned the future of the world. In the play, the scholars know their translation is like an arrow, one they’ll never see land: They understand the importance of placing each word, each comma, just so. They know, too, that their actions stand to be scrutinized until the end of days.

But the scholars are running out of time: The king is growing impatient, they’re told. Savile, near-crazed by the weight of his theological duty, lashes out at Willie, ruining the boy’s birthday and ignoring his festering tooth.

When The King James Bible Play’s scorching first act comes to a close, it’s in a thick cloud of anguish: The work is done. But at what cost?

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Though the second act is less exceptional, it further texturizes the ideas left dangling from the first. We’re in a time approximating now, watching an all-female theatre company construct their next show. Surprise, surprise: The troupe, led by director Martie (Deborah Hay), will be tackling the origins of the King James Bible. (And in their spare time, they’ll be debating the merits of pineapple on pizza.)

The symmetries between acts soon become obvious: Martie’s relationship with daughter Han (Vivien Endicott-Douglas) is strained by differing views on religion and theatre. The corps of actors, played by Sara Topham, Angel Lo and Liz Der, carry dreams and neuroses of their own. If their play fails, they’ll face real consequences from the theatre’s board president – a monarch by any other name – and the public. The work is vital, mutters Martie as she records snippets of rehearsal on her iPhone.

But the work is also dangerous.

The King James Bible Play is a dense, tightly-knit beast of a play, and director Nina Lee Aquino stages it with a keen eye for historical style. Set and costume designer Robin Fisher outfits the Stratford Festival’s intimate Studio Theatre with mountains of books and expensive-looking furniture, creating a space that transitions easily from the distant past to the present era.

Fisher’s costumes, too, facilitate much of the production’s storytelling: Robes and headpieces are cleverly mirrored between the two acts, further reinforcing the play’s narrative echoes.

It’s Aquino’s cast, however, who make The King James Bible Play a must-see world premiere at this year’s Stratford Festival. Led by Lane and Hay, both of whom offer career-high performances as Savile and Martie, the ensemble attacks Corbeil-Coleman’s script with equal measures of emotional generosity and intellectual wit. Their jokes are sparkly and light; their cries of agony cut to the bone.

Plays about religion are dicey affairs: You never know who might be in the audience, and who might hold origin stories such as this one close to their soul.

But The King James Bible Play is remarkable in its framing of spirituality: This is not a good-versus-evil play, or a why-my-religion-is-better-than-yours play. It’s a treat-people-with-kindness play. It’s a treatise on work-life balance, and on the importance of thoughtful writing.

Indeed, not unlike the humble pineapple, Corbeil-Coleman’s script is an anomaly: oddly-shaped, and tricky to describe on first encounter. But just like that once-luxurious fruit, the dramaturgical juice at The King James Bible Play’s core is simply too good to pass up.