Messiah Without a Cause, but With a Guitar

So, like, Jesus is a total stoner and sometimes, you know, kind of a jerk. But he’s totally cute, and totally good on guitar.

Or so it goes in “Jesus in India,” Lloyd Suh’s playful if thin tale about the young Jesus. Here he is an 18-year-old runaway, a rebel who’s hit the road with his pal Abigail of Galilee. (She’s into him, but it’s Platonic.) As for his beliefs: “Well see, I dunno, man. Like I guess you could call me a lapsed Jew. Agnostic. Figuring it out. Work in progress. Something like that.”

This work in progress (a convincingly unsettled Justin Blanchard) winds up somewhere in India. Now he’s thinking of becoming a Buddhist or a punk rocker.

Mr. Suh’s setting takes off from the persistent myths that account for some of Jesus’ “lost years” (ages 12 to 30) by placing him in India or Tibet where, legend would have it, he was exposed to Buddhist ideas. (Another story has him surviving the crucifixion and traveling to Kashmir; he’s said to be buried in a tomb in Srinagar.)

“Jesus in India,” though, isn’t really about India or religion. Those are just backdrops for a coming-of-age story â€" with a twist and a beat â€" that could as easily have been “Jesus in Bushwick” or Jesus in any place you can jam with friends and have occasional druggie talks about God and Buddhism.

Mr. Suh, who has a fine ear for modern speech and stoned silliness, takes giddy delight in making Jesus a fairly normal, foul-mouthed guy, whose interest in humanity doesn’t extend much beyond his own pain and happiness. But the jokey irreverence grows tiresome, mostly because this Jesus never really seems like Jesus. He’s just another teenage rebel trying to burn brightly as adult responsibilities loom.

Of course, his responsibilities are particularly epic. He ran away when his father told him he would have to “bear the weight of the sins of the world, and one day die so that others may live.” Bummer.

Mr. Suh’s Jesus does put away some childish things, if not very convincingly. He quits the band because, he tells his mates, Gopal and Sushil (the amusing Vedant Gokhale and Neimah Djourabchi), he has been trying out versions of himself, and this one doesn’t fit. Except, as we’ve seen, it does. This Jesus may not show much compassion or purpose, but he has rock-god charisma. He even lifts the awesomely untalented Gopal and Sushil to a higher level. (Mr. Blanchard makes a suitably intense rocker; the original music is by Shane Rettig.)

Still, his path lies elsewhere. Soon he’s setting up house with his pregnant girlfriend, Mahari (Meera Rohit Kumbhani), an Untouchable and a slave. (Instinctive egalitarianism is his most Jesus-like quality.) He builds furniture like his dad. And he goes acoustic, soulfully strumming like a 1960s hippie.

This Ma-Yi Theater Company production directed by Daniella Topol moves quickly and has imaginative touches, including Kris Stone’s sparsely evocative set, complete with a rolling wooden camel. But the energy can’t hide that Mr. Suh’s play still seems to be searching for meaning beyond its yuks. This Jesus can play guitar and is human, all too human, but he doesn’t show much promise as the savior of a broken world.