by AMY BARRATT

After seeing Rick Miller's Bigger Than Jesus at the Just for Laughs festival, the question I'm asking myself is: what would Jesus write? "Judge not, lest thou be judged," perhaps? Yeah well, that's just a risk I'll have to take, Lord, or else I'm out of a job.

The show, playing the bigger house at the Centaur, is performed by Miller alone on a stage that is empty except for a white screen and a suspended video camera. It is structured on the Roman Catholic Mass. I know this because Miller comes out on stage at the beginning and tells us so. Miller is a charismatic enough guy that he can almost get away with this drab beginning, but I'm surprised that after living with this show for over two years, this is all he's got.

Perhaps he feels the need to explain the structure of the play, for fear we will think it has no structure. For non-Catholic me, despite the tip, it still seemed like quite a rambling piece of theatre.

Don't get me wrong: Miller is always a pleasure to watch. The guy is freakishly talented, especially on a vocal level. Famous for his bang-on imitations of all the characters on The Simpsons in his MacBeth take-off MacHomer, here he has a good time with Southern and New York accents, as well as showing off his remarkable singing voice. But that's just it: despite an apparently sincere desire to examine the role of Jesus in our culture, the show still comes across as first and foremost a showcase for Rick Miller's talents.

The multimedia aspects of the piece work nicely. This is the advantage of having Daniel Brooks along as director and co-writer. Projected images along with live video feeds allow them to create some memorable images along the way, mostly associated with the crucifixion.

As far as content, although it would presumably be offensive to evangelical types and Joseph Ratzinger, there is nothing new here. For most of us, Miller and Brooks's‚ musings fall well within our comfort zones, which is not where good theatre should fall.

Some of Miller's other work gets away with being on the shallow side by delivering non-stop laughs. Bigger Than Jesus has a few good guffaws and a lot of groaners, like this one: on an Air Jesus flight to Jerusalem, he says, "I'll be your Jesus for this evening. Your host. (Throws the audience a look the equivalent of a rim-shot). To be fair, when Miller appeared in full Jesus regalia sounding like an unprepared substitute teacher, at least a couple of audience members were in danger of peeing themselves.

If fans of MacHomer are turned off by this show, it's not because they can't take more serious theatre, but that Bigger Than Jesus doesn't pack that promised punch. When I spoke to him prior to his Montreal opening, Miller said that he was happy to finally have a show that bridged the two worlds he was used to working in independently: avant-garde theatre and pop culture silliness. Bigger Than Jesus doesn't so much bridge as straddle.

BIGGER THAN JESUS CONTINUES AT THE CENTAUR THEATRE (453 ST-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER), 8 P.M. UNTIL JULY 24, 288-3161

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