By Charles Spencer
30 October 1995

When Dennis Potter's play was first shown on television in 1969, Mary Whitehouse tried to prosecute it for blasphemy, and it is true that the dramatist takes a distinctly partial view of the Gospel story, omitting the miracles, the Last Supper and the Resurrection. What he stresses is Christ's humanity, his doubt, his radical teaching and his terrible suffering. As a half-hearted Christian with the feeblest of faiths, I found it far more moving than any of today's happy clappy evangelistic certainties; and in Bill Bryden's superb ensemble production, with a shatteringly good performance from Joseph Fiennes as Jesus, this intense and painful play emerges as one of the most powerful experiences on the London stage. Pit Theatre, EC2 (0171 638 8891).