The Oberammergau Passion Play is an extraordinary spectacle. This vernacular retelling of Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem, his trial and crucifixion is the world’s longest-running and largest amateur production, and a controversial barometer of Jewish-Christian relations in Germany. This year’s production of the “greatest story ever told” is the biggest yet, a highly professional five-hour marathon featuring more than 2,000 amateur actors, singers, musicians and technicians—all of them residents of this small Bavarian town for at least 20 years—as well as a donkey, a camel, two horses, and a mixed multitude of sheep and goats.
