Hold on: Caulfield’s Coming to Carpinteria

How often do you get the chance to see a veritable decades-long star of stage and screen perform a one-man play in a nearly 100-year-old theater that seats barely 200 people? 

If you’ve picked up your paper on publication day (July 23), head over to the Alcazar Theatre where acclaimed actor Maxwell Caulfield – will present a single performance of Pilate: The Lost Gospel, written by British playwright Michael Punter. The play portrays Pontius Pilate in 36 AD, when he’s been recalled to Rome to answer for his political excesses as governor of Judea. But the work is not a simple retelling of history, rather examining the events leading to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ from a perspective challenging assumptions. 

The piece is also described as part thriller, part memoir and part moral reckoning – a work that explores the fragile, morally ambiguous human behind the historic notoriety – wrestling with power and accountability for a choice that is still infamous 2,000 years later. 

The one-man play sold out this spring in Ojai – where the actor has long lived with Juliet Mills, his wife of 46 years – and is heading across the pond to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August. 

“The play is largely devoid of religiosity,” Caulfield said in a press release. “Rather, it is about accountability, doubt, and the stories people tell themselves in order to live with the consequences of their actions.”

It’s a far cry from the role that made Caulfield famous not long after meeting Mills while both were starring in the touring production of The Elephant Man in the early 1980s. The actor’s starring turncame in Grease 2, when some said he was the next John Travolta, as well as Empire Records. He’s had innumerable opportunities embodying iconic characters on stage and screen ever since. 

“The play is a very original take on the story, with Pilate in the witness box where he begins to peel the layers of his own life…,” Caulfield told Britain’s Beyond the Curtain. “They say all theater is politics, and I don’t promote the idea that this is a political play (but) the subject matter will never lose its pertinence.”

Pilate: The Lost Gospel performs at 7 pm on July 23 at the Alcazar Theatre. Visit www.thealcazar.org