For a play that has never yet been acted in this city, Salmi (or Psalmi) Morse’s “Passion Play” has made more stir than any play that has been acted. And this “Passion Play” suggests the memory of how old New York–or the theatre-goin’ portion thereof–once treated an actor called Stevens who played the part of Judas Iscariot in a show piece called the “Destruction of Jerusalem,” at the Chatham Street Theatre. The pit hissed him and hooted him every night. The goodiest-goodiest Sunday-school boys and girls couldn’t have hated Judas Iscariot worse than these Bowery boys, who had never been inside of a Sunday-school in their lives. The pit’s ideas of what Judas had done were not very clear. One fellow told another that “that cuss Judas has gone back on an old chap called Abraham, who had been very good to him and had sold him to Julius Caesar for twenty dollars.” But they did know that Judas had been a sneak and a traitor. So they one night saluted him with cabbages, onions and rotten eggs, till he went to the manager and vowed he would never perform in the part again, and they had to take off the piece in the midst of its run, right in the middle of the week. There would not have been much show for the “Passion Play” then in New York, at all events.
By-the-by, speakin’ of the “Passion Play,” the son of the man who played Judas in the German “Passion Play” at Oberammergau (George Lechner), and the brother of the man who played Christ in the same play and place (Joseph Mair), are in the city of New York now.
Both Mair and Lechner were drafted and compelled to serve in the war between France and Prussia, and were both killed. Joseph Mair looked a great deal like the pictures of Christ, while George Lechner, though a very nice man personally, had a dark, forbiddin’ look, which made him seem like a Judas.
Mair was chosen ten years in advance of the play for Christ, and let his beard grow for eighteen months. There were four rehearsals a week for nearly six months; 30,000 florins, about $18,000, were spent in hard cash on scenery, dresses and appointments, and the majority of the receipts after payin’ expenses were devoted to religious purposes or charity.
The performers were paid very moderate salaries. Mair received two hundred florins, Judas only fifty florins, down to the children, who got five florins each. A handsome woman, Josephine Lang, with splendid long and dark hair, played Mary Magdalen, and made one of the “hits” of the piece. Joseph Mair, the Christ, was himself a really great actor, and played the crucifixion scene with such realistic intensity that he fainted on the cross.
All the actors in this “Passion Play” were religious men and women, and they acted as much as a matter of religion and of love as for money. They personified their characters magnificently on this stage because they had been studyin’ up their parts for over a year and scarcely doin’ anythin’ else.
And it seems strange–if anythin’ in real life can be called strange–that here in New York to-day, where the “Passion Play” is under the ban, the nearest relatives of the Christ and the Judas of the “Passion Play” at Oberammergau should be livin’–the one drivin’ a cart, the other tendin’ in a beer saloon.
[Editor’s notes: Salmi Morse had been a unsuccessful adventurer and California rancher before attempting theater productions in the late 1870s. He adapted the Oberammergau Passion Play for the American stage, but it met with objections in San Francisco; and was banned in New York–no matter how reverent the treatment, stage depictions of the story of Christ were considered sacrilegious. Morse attempted to mount other plays in New York, but they failed, and he lost everything. He committed suicide by jumping into the Hudson River a year after the above column (which, it appears, was written in support of Morse) appeared.
The “Destruction of Jerusalem” was staged at the Chatham Street Theatre in 1839. Harry E. Stevens, then the actor who portrayed Judas, went on to become the stage manager of the Bowery Theatre, one of the leading theaters of the city. He died at age 39 in 1854 after a playful “collar-and-elbow” wrestling match with an actor-friend resulted in a fractured spine.
