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We'll probably never know the whole truth about Mary Magdalene, but Katie Ketchum gave us some entertaining possibilities to consider in her rollicking one-woman show Friday night at the Lucerne Alpine Senior Center.
She will repeat "Magdalene: The Mary Magdalene Story" at 2:30 p.m. today at the center, 10th and Country Club Drive, Lucerne, in another benefit for the center.
Ketchum is not the first to bring a sparkling imagination to this biblical mystery, but she's certainly the first to do it solo and as a combined rock and gospel concert – and with such a voice! She soars, as Oklahoma trailer park chick "Marlene," trying to hold the band together after leader "Joe" is murdered. It's tough, because the boys in the band don't want a woman leader, no matter what Joe said. "Pete" is especially difficult, but then he's what Marlene calls "mishomogenized" – just doesn't like women.
As Marlene, Ketchum plays wicked keyboards reminiscent of Jerry Lee Lewis, and had the audience clapping and singing along. In a series of dreams she portrays the multi-faceted Mary Magdalene as a follower of Jesus, as his bride and widow, as a disgruntled prostitute, as an initiate of the Egyptian goddess Isis and as a contemporary rapper. Some might call it irreverent; compassionate and witty is more like it.
The story of Mary of Magdala is history that could give you the screaming fits, and Ketchum brings that confusion to life. In the sixth century C.E., Pope Gregory managed to combine her with two other Marys, Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, and a nameless woman who bathed Jesus' feet in the Gospel of Luke. Many of us were told in Sunday school that she was a prostitute, but recent scholarship indicates she was a respectable close friend of Jesus, possibly a wealthy benefactor.
Author Dan Brown created a sensation with his puzzle-filled romance "The Da Vinci Code," which draws on some earlier problematic speculation that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and the mother of his children. Sonoma County resident Lewis Perdue told a similar story in his 1983 "The Da Vinci Legacy," which was not a sensation.
The very welcome Lucerne performance could be considered an out-of-town tryout for the 30 shows scheduled April 16-May 11, 2008, at the Sacramento Theatre Company. (Ticket info: www.sactheatre.org). Ketchum's aunts, Eva Mooney and Elisha O'Neil, both Lucerne residents, arranged to bring the show to the Northshore.
Lucerne tickets are $12 for seniors and $15 for the general public. For more information call 707-274-8779 or 707-274-5689.
Ketchum lived in Lucerne in the late '70s and performed at Konocti Harbor Inn. She also starred as Maria in the Yuba College production of "The Sound of Music." She now lives in Sebastopol. She has been performing and facilitating workshops for 25 years, and received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for her one person musical on the life of American painter Mary Cassatt. She toured the Cassatt show at colleges and theaters, while still a theater student at University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her tour included performances at the Women's Building in San Francisco, Sonoma County's Cinnabar Theater and Luther Burbank Center (Wells Fargo Pavilion), the Sands Hotel, and Northwestern University in Illinois.
She toured the country with her concert "Clear the Air" (the Electric Car Association brought their cars to the performance on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.). Her 15 albums have a following which includes Mother Teresa, who played Ketchum's music in her healing centers throughout India.
After years of research, Ketchum premiered "Magdalene" at Spreckels Performing Arts Center in Rohnert Park, had a successful run in Sebastopol, and went on to critical acclaim in San Francisco in the summer of 2006.
Before starting the Magdalene project, Ketchum performed and facilitated children's theater and music for more than 10,000 children in public schools.
E-mail Sophie Annan Jensen at
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