Two popes and one question: how do we move from era to era?
The Two Popes (Rose Theatre, Kingston, and touring)
Verdict: Alpha Papas ★★★★✩ The Snail House (Hampstead
Theatre, London)
Verdict: More pain, please! ★★★✩✩
AT A time of succession in the Royal Family, this fine revival of Anthony McCarten’s play about Popes Benedict and Francis is poignantly apposite.
Its central question of how we move from one era to another, and how an incumbent relates to their office, weighs heavily on our minds today.
The play, which was turned into a film starring Anthony Hopkins and Jonathan Pryce, is a speculation on what happened behind the scenes in 2013, when Benedict shook the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics by becoming the first pontiff to step down in 700 years.
The retiring Pope is played here by Anton Lesser — with Nicholas Woodeson as Francis — and both find huge warmth in the men’s troubled souls.
The big debate is whether the Catholic Church should renew or transform its 2,000- year- old traditions. But both McCarten and the actors focus on the two men as human beings who find themselves overwhelmed by mighty responsibility.
Lesser at first revels in Benedict’s delight in secretly watching Kommissar Rex, the Austrian whodunnit about a crime- solving canine. He recalls, innocently, how in his youth a girl once allowed him to pick salt off her pretzel.
Woodeson’s Argentine Cardinal Bergoglio (who went on to become Pope Francis) loves to tango and watch football; and once told a girl he’d become a priest if she didn’t marry him (the sigh that follows is worth the ticket price alone). Yet Bergoglio reminds Benedict that a priest is a ‘flawed vessel’ and asks who are they to make changes to a church that is itself in need of such great forgiveness.
THE former Joseph Ratzinger ( later Benedict) is racked with guilt at failing to thwart a paedophile priest in Germany. Bergoglio is ashamed not to have done more to support victims of Argentina’s fascist Junta in the 1970s. And yet, despite their imperfections and misgivings, one of them must shoulder the burden of the papacy.
Both are spurred on by supportive and provocative nuns (Lynsey Beauchamp and Leaphia Darko); and James Dacre’s production is tender yet intense. There are sometimes corny blasts of ‘Gloria! Gloria!’ echoing amid wafts of incense and churchy lighting, but this is a thoughtful and moving delight that glows anew.
Catholics are well known for their belief in the dignity of suffering and, as a Catholic myself, I’d like to have been made to suffer a bit more by Richard eyre’s debut play, The Snail House.
Clearly influenced by the great Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen, it’s the story of a consultant paediatrician and knight of the realm who finds the past catching up with him as he celebrates his 55th birthday with friends and family.
Played by Vincent Franklin, our doctor is an overbearing northerner, firm in his faith in science. During the course of the evening, he is confronted by the catering manager — against whom (it transpires) he gave evidence in court some years before.
The doctor’s wife (eva Pope) endures grievances familiar to spouses of alpha males, while his gay son (Patrick Walshe McBride) is a scathing political adviser, and their daughter ( Grace HoggRobinson) a teenage eco-warrior.
One of the great directors of modern times, eyre (a late-onset writer at 79) unfolds the action skilfully. But I craved more of everything: sweat, tears, intrigue and, in particular, pain.
Not to mention cunning. How, for instance, did the catering manager (Amanda Bright) come to take charge of the posh party in an oak-panelled school room? Was it just a coincidence?
Our top-dog medical man also could have done with more of a moral dilemma: one that might have revealed greater depths in his character. Instead, the charges laid against him aren’t really his fault, and are resolved without any great cost.
For more reviews see Mailonline.