THE LAST CONFESSION. To 15 September.

London

THE LAST CONFESSION
by Roger Crane

Theatre Royal Haymarket To 15 September 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & Sat 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval

TICKETS: 0870 4000 626
www.trh.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 2 July

Faith, doubt and skulduggery in a play about which there’s no doubt.
This large-cast play (it has three popes, for a start) must have made an impressive opening to this year’s Chichester Festival Theatre season. Even within the Theatre Royal’s proscenium, scenes of sweeping action impressively contrast intimate scenes.

The contrast’s caught in William Dudley’s design; distant glimpses of golden Vatican glory are screened off by dark railings interspersed with elaborate doorways, suggesting the dark labyrinths through which the business of a worldwide church with its traditions and tensions is organised.

This play covers the darkest moment in the modern papacy, the suspect death after 33 days in office of Pope John Paul I; presumably first-time playwright Roger Crane hasn’t followed advice beginners should write out of their own experience (though as a New York lawyer, he’s presumably avoided any libel traps).

Broadly, the play revisits Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor chapter from The Brothers Karamazov, showing a Christlike figure as anathema to the church (as Soviet Communism, it was said, would have abhorred Karl Marx). A new pope throws off excessive ceremonial, sidelines unsympathetic management (if we weren’t on his side it’d seem callous manipulative management) and tries to purge the murky depths of Vatican finance.

Events are dramatised within the frame of a potentially explosive Confession by the dying Cardinal Benelli, whose moral guilt focuses on lack of support for the brief papacy. This gives the play a second suspense thread (why does Benelli need to confess?) alongside the clearer question of Who (If Anyone) Killed the Pope? The Vatican’s awash with motives, factions, cover-ups; there’s a trial-like inquiry where seeming certainties are undermined by cross-questioning.

David Jones’ production marshals and paces all this splendidly. David Suchet’s Benelli encompasses passion, guilt, irony and doubt, suggesting whole thought-processes through facial inflections. Few actors could match such a performance without strain, but the ever-excellent Charles Kay does, as his smoothly determined conservative antagonist Felici. Benelli’s contrasted too by Michael Jayston’s austerely gaunt Confessor, whose identity is fully revealed at the end. This intelligent, theatrical, engrossing play examines faith, doubt and religious organisation without trivialising or becoming dogmatic. It’s just what the West End needs.

Cardinal Giovanni Benelli: David Suchet
The Confessor: Michael Jayston
Cardinal Luciani: Richard O’Callaghan
Monsignor Magee: Roger May
Cardinal Villot: Bernard Lloyd
Bishop Marcinkus: Stuart Milligan
Pope Paul VI: Clifford Rose
Cardinal Felici: Charles Kay
Cardinal Ottaviani: John Franklyn-Robbins
Cardinal Baggio: John Cormack
Cardinal Suenens: Michael Cronin
Cardinal Gantin: HJoseph Mydell
Cardinal Lorscheider: Joseph Long
Father Lorenzi: Paul Foster
Sister Vincenza: Maroussia Frank
Dr Buzzonetti/Thomas: Christopher Mellows
Ensemble: Paul Beech, John Davitt, Adam Napier, Peter Coxon, Luke Osborne, Andrew Wallis

Director: David Jones
Designer: William Dudley
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Composer: Dominic Muldowney
Costume: Fotini Dimou
Assistant director: Thomas Hescott

2007-07-03 10:05:35