Monthly Archives: May 2007

The Last Confession – May 2007

8/10

By: Roger Crane

Directed by: David Jones

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre

Date: Thursday 3rd May 2007

This is a world premiere of the first produced play by a New York lawyer in his fifties. It has seventeen speaking parts, only one double, and has taken ten years to be staged. It was an amazing debut, a fine play, and also proves the Chichester Festival Theatre management are still willing to take risks.

We attended a pre-show talk by the author, which was very informative, and entertaining, although I didn’t manage to hear everything. I’m hoping to eventually download their podcast to re-hear it all, but for now I’ll just mention that it was very funny – he has a good sense of humour – and didn’t give anything away about the plot, apart from suggesting that there’s a twist. Apparently someone had been coming on in a different costume at the end, and people weren’t recognising who he was, so now he comes on in the same costume, and people get it, whatever “it” is. Roger also stressed that he would be available at the end of the performance tonight, and positively encouraged us to come up and tell him how it went. We did so, and he kindly signed our copy of the play text. Wonderful. Now for the play itself.

The play tells the story of the year of the three Popes, as seen by insiders in the Vatican. It’s a story of the power struggle within the Catholic hierarchy (not that different from power struggles anywhere, it must be said), but heightened by the possibility that a Pope has been bumped off to make way for a more malleable or even reactionary pontiff, one who will unravel the gains made by the liberal reformers of recent years. We see the developments through the eyes of Cardinal Benelli, played by David Suchet, who is making his final confession to a monk/priest, and insists on going over the sad events of 1978. He appears to be confessing to killing the emissary of God, but experienced theatregoers such as ourselves take this sort of thing with a large chunk of salt, and don’t assume it’s literally true. (One of these days it will – won’t we be surprised!)

Benelli himself rejects being elected as Pope once Paul dies, and instead engineers the election of Luciani, who takes the name John Paul I. He is a saintly man, more Christ-like than anyone else in the play, or even in the entire Vatican, for that matter. His ideas shock the Curia, the Vatican establishment, and he even plans to replace many of those in positions of power. It is as these plans are being made that the Pope is found dead, in bed, with a heart attack being declared to be the cause of death. Benelli insists on an investigation, but it soon becomes clear that it’s just a superficial attempt to allay public suspicions. No autopsy is done, and there’s a clear possibility that the Pope may have been denied his medicine at a crucial time. In any case, murder cannot be proved, and cannot be ruled out.

That’s one of the joys of this play. It’s good at presenting the facts as far as they are known, with some reasonably inferred glosses, but leaves us entirely to make up our own minds. However, it’s clear Cardinal Benelli’s sense of guilt relates to his manoeuvring Luciani into the Papacy, to whose pressures he then succumbed. We then have the delight of seeing the various political groupings within the Cardinals locking horns over John Paul’s successor, and eventually compromising on the first non-Italian Pope for 500 years, John Paul II. Benelli has lost his chance to be Pope.

There is so much material in this play that it takes a while to absorb a lot of the details. The characters of the various Cardinals are beautifully sketched in – each has their own agenda, and to an extent they overlap, but I felt that dissension and rivalry could burst out anywhere, at any time, over the slightest thing. There was no serious commitment to serving God in any of them, other than Luciani. The Catholic religion was merely the product the Church was selling that year; given time, they might have moved into many other areas, as Marcinkus was doing with the Vatican Bank. Roger Crane mentioned that one senior Church Official, who read his play, considered that he was trying to bring down the Catholic Church. I certainly didn’t get that impression from this production, but in any case, he couldn’t do nearly as good a job as the people in charge of it are doing.

Now for the details. The set was all cages – right angles of iron bars which could be moved around easily to create offices, open spaces, etc. They made the Vatican seem like a prison – heavily fortified, an effect referred to in the text when someone mentions the Pope as being a prisoner in his own apartments. The desks and chairs, etc, were fairly plain, and costumes were naturally based on actual designs – I’m still not sure why some cardinals wear red, and some wear black trimmed with red – perhaps my resident Catholic will enlighten me. (Speaking of which, he gave me a very useful run down of the three Popes storyline before the off, which came in very handy as I didn’t have time to read the program notes beforehand.) [P.S. no, he doesn’t know why there are different colour schemes either.]

Performances. David Suchet was excellent, as always. He oozed power and intelligence, reminding me a bit of the Robert Maxwell portrayal by Michael Pennington (not that weird, we just haven’t seen David Suchet’s version yet (on TV)). Maxwell was the sort of person who might happily have made someone into a Pope, too. Michael Jayston as the confessor had a more difficult job, as he mainly seemed to be devil’s advocate (sorry) to Benelli within the structure of the play, to get him to expand on his views. His character develops in unexpected ways, however, and I thoroughly enjoyed seeing him on stage again.

Luciani (Richard O’Callaghan) was superb. His simplicity and strength made the piece work. Roger Crane made some reference to the question of how the Christian churches would react if Christ were to return, and that he feels his play addresses that issue. It certainly does, as Luciani is as close to Christ as you’re likely to get in the upper strata of any major church nowadays. I felt he was a lamb to the slaughter fairly early on, though it was good to see him standing up to the lions and doing a bit of roaring himself. Of the other cardinals, Baggio and Felici made the most impression, although that’s not to diminish my appreciation of the others. Baggio (Bruce Purchase) was the most blunt, and the only one to openly defy the new Pope. Felici (Charles Kay) was more suave, a real politician, who had seen much over the years and learned how to finesse each opportunity to his, or rather the Church’s, greatest advantage.

One final mention for Sister Vincenza (Maroussia Frank), a stroppy nun who really knows how to serve, but doesn’t see any need to soften the blow.

Finally, I must just emphasise how entertaining this was. Often funny, it was also tense, gripping and invariably powerful. The insights into human nature were accurate, and the drama built to a very satisfactory conclusion, in the sense that we knew when it was finished, and felt complete, rather than we thought it was a happy outcome for all concerned. Life’s like that.

I thoroughly enjoyed the evening and would happily see this play again. Hopefully other managements will be courageous enough to stage it, now they know it’s a hit.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me

Twelfth Night – May 2007

3/10

By: William Shakespeare

Directed by: Edward Hall

Company: Propeller

Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre

Date: Tuesday 1st May 2007

I’ve enjoyed Propeller’s work before and I was hoping the Taming of the Shrew in the Complete Works was a one-off, but with this paired production I’m not so sure. Both productions demonstrated a lack of female perspective – these men can portray women’s outsides, but not their insides.

With both of these plays the ensemble seemed to have taken them too seriously, a definite problem with comedies. I’m not keen on the gross stuff, true – having Sir Toby actually throw up on stage was never likely to appeal to me. And while the dangling loo roll trick was great in The Nerd, it just looked tacky here. It’s as if they couldn’t really get inside the characters well enough, and so had to do more externally to get the ideas in the text across. Why not just try acting?

The set was naturally the same as the Taming one, though used differently. Here the wardrobes and chairs were all thrown about, liked the aftermath of some heavy-duty party – appropriate for Twelfth Night. It suggested dissipation, anarchy, and the neglect caused by grief, all themes in the play. The furniture was mostly covered over with dust covers, gradually removed, again suggesting disuse.

The costumes were mainly suits, with Olivia having some fetching sparkly evening dresses after her mourning phase. Maria was in drab black throughout, and Viola had only a short scene in her nightie before opting for the grey suit which her brother also wore. (These were the best matched pair of twins I’ve seen, by the way.) Feste stood out in this company, in more than one respect. He was in a suit, but it was pretty scruffy, with his tie dangling and a general air of carelessness. He carried a violin and looked like he’d just come from an all-night fiddler’s convention. He was the only character who didn’t wear a mask at any time – all the other actors wore them when they were present but not actually in the scene, like ghosts. This gave Feste the appearance of being in control of the proceedings, the Lord of Misrule. He was certainly more involved than some other Festes we’ve seen.

Speaking of the masks, the second scene – the shipwreck – had a lot of the cast on stage, throwing Viola and Sebastian around, then dropping her down near the front of the stage for the lines with the sea captain. With their suits and grey masks, the others looked like ghosts, and they faded away into the background (and wardrobes) as if melting into air. This was a wonderfully evocative staging, reminding me of all the dead people being mourned at the start of the play, and all the others lost in the shipwreck.

For the opening scene, Feste took a sheet off Orsino – he’d been sitting in a chair, completely covered, all the time the auditorium was filling up. I liked this Orsino – he looked pretty rough, he’d been drinking and he was obviously suffering. The music was good, too. At the post-show discussion, we learned that many of the cast just happened to be talented musicians as well, so there was more of an emphasis on music this time.

Olivia was more flighty than I’ve seen before, even camp at times. Sir Toby was a ruffian, very drunk and unpleasant, but I didn’t get his craftiness and villainy in rooking Sir Andrew so much this time. Sir Andrew wasn’t the usual lanky suspect, and he was one character whose normal comedy seemed to get lost. I’ve no objection to overturning conventions, but I do like them to be overturned to a purpose; not so here, unfortunately. Malvolio was excellent, all brooding pomposity and menace in the early stages, through to rampant lunacy and eventual anger. Bob Barrett was in the Nicholas Nicklebys last year, mainly playing affable chaps – he’s shown he can do a lot more in this show. The yellow stockings were indeed cross-gartered, as we saw when he whipped off his trousers. The leather codpiece lent a raunchy air to the whole outfit – no wonder Olivia fled.

Maria was a bit underplayed, I felt. Viola was OK – Tam Williams has had plenty of practice playing women, and has enough of the female in his looks to convey the part well, but even here I felt a lack of emotional depth. The line I love best in Twelfth Night – “What should I do in Illyria? ….” – left me unmoved, and I rarely got any real sense of grief. Even the comedy lines after Malvolio ‘returns’ the ring were largely lost. Everything seemed to go at too fast a pace for any of the characters to register what’s going on inside of them – not a lack I’ve noticed in the text itself!

Sebastian was stronger here, and that’s often the advantage of a true ensemble – these are not treated as such minor parts. The final revelations still had me sniffling, although the sense of everything piling up against Viola/Cesario wasn’t so clear here as in the Russian Twelfth Night (RSC Complete Works). Feste was definitely the strongest character in this production, and although he was generally laid back, he could join in the revenge against Malvolio quite happily.

The set piece with the letter had its good bits, and its no-so-good bits. Overall, I liked that Olivia was posed on a plinth and actually holding the letter. The idea of this lady having a statue of herself in her garden was appealing, and the line “this is her hand” took on an extra meaning. Also, when Malvolio took the letter, after having it practically thrust under his nose, the empty hand happened to have two fingers sticking up at him.

Sir Toby and the others (no Fabian in this version) were hiding behind cones of topiary of varying sizes, but none large enough to really conceal anybody. Other cast members were posing as statues of the three wise monkeys, but frequently changed position as well as interacting with the characters on stage; this led to one entertaining moment when the “speak no evil” statue had his hands clamped over Sir Toby’s mouth. All pretty entertaining, but it still felt overdone. Too much work for not enough return, and not enough attention to delivering the text.

All in all, I would give this production 2/10 for the first half, and 3/10 for the second. As the productions are shaped to a considerable extent by the actors in the company, it may be that this group just do things in a way I don’t appreciate. I’d certainly be willing to see a Propeller production again in the hope that changes to the ensemble may lead to an approach I find more pleasing.

Nearly forgot – how could I? – male nudity alert. Sebastian and Olivia had obviously got to know each other really well. Sebastian got out of bed with a sheet wrapped round him, and just as she entered with the priest he dropped the sheet to reveal all (sadly, not to us). Good fun, and a nice arse.

© 2007 Sheila Evans at ilovetheatre.me