John Cleese has ‘no intention’ of cutting controversial scene from Life of Brian stage adaptation
John Cleese (L) and Loretta scene from Life of Brian (R). (Getty/Handmade Films/Python Pictures)
Monty Python star John Cleese has confirmed that a controversial scene from the Life of Brian film, which mocks trans women, will remain in a new stage adaptation.
Cleese rose to prominence in the 1970s as part of the renowned Python sketch team, starring in hit spin-off films The Holy Grail (1975) and Life of Brian (1979), and the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, before appearing in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
In recent years, Cleese has waded into the trans rights debate by defending author JK Rowling’s heavily criticised comments, and railing against “cancel culture”.
Now, the comedian is doubling down on his views with plans to mount an adaptation of Life of Brian for the London stage later this year.
In a series of unthreaded tweets posted on 25 May, Cleese confirmed that he has “no intention” of altering Life of Brian after reports surfaced that he would be cutting a scene where one of the characters, Stan (Eric Idle), is mocked for wanting to identify as a woman called Loretta.
“A few days ago, I spoke to an audience outside London. I told them I was adapting the Life of Brian so that we could do it as a stage show (not a musical),” he wrote.
“I said that we’d had a table-reading of the latest draft in [New York City] a year ago. All the actors – several of them Tony winners – had advised me strongly to cut the Loretta scene. I have, of course, no intention of doing so.”
He wen on: “These were absolutely top-class Broadway performers and they were adamant that we would not get away with doing the scene in NYC. Producers tend to be scaredy-cats, and they don’t remember that the protests in NYC when Brian was released meant we never needed to do publicity.”
Life of Brian was heavily censored when it first came out, with the UK, Ireland, Norway and Italy all imposing bans due to the contentious religious commentary.
Now more than four decades old, the satirical film follows wrongly-acclaimed messiah Brian (Graham Chapman) and includes a conversation between Idle’s character Stan and Cleese’s character Reg where Stan declares they now identify as a woman called Loretta and “wants to have” babies. Reg dismisses this.
“I’m not oppressing you Stan, you haven’t got a womb. Where’s the foetus gonna gestate? You gonna keep it in a box?” he asks.
After others suggest Stan should have “the right to have babies”, Reg continues: “What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies” adding that it is “symbolic of his struggle against reality”.
The Daily Mail previously reported Cleese’s comments at his one-man show earlier this month that prompted him to share his thoughts on social media.
“At the end, I said to the American actors: ‘What do you think?’ And they said: ‘We love the script, but you can’t do that stuff about Loretta nowadays’,” Cleese reportedly told the audience.
“So, here you have something there’s never been a complaint about in 40 years, that I’ve heard of, and now all of a sudden we can’t do it because it’ll offend people. What is one supposed to make of that? I think there were a lot of things that were actually, in some strange way, predictive of what was actually going to happen later.”
