I had the opportunity to see the Last Confession on Friday as it begins its World Tour from the West End and
it was magnificent. David Suchet was riveting and his character’s struggles
with faith and doubt put me in mind of Salieri in Amadeus. It is a deep, musing and reflective piece
that sits well in the minimalist staging. Expert acting on all fronts and just
a really, really strong piece. It is more than a murder mystery entrenched in
the history of the short-lived office of Pope John Paul I, it is a rumination
on faith and doubt. Cardinal Bernelli (
Suchet) walks us through a realistic voyage of uncertainty. A man wanting to implement long-due changes
amidst the Vatican politics shrouded in thousands of years of tradition. When he reminded the pope that Christ was the
greatest revolutionary you could hear a pin drop in the theatre. This takes a sensitive subject, a religious tradition
held highly and respected greatly and treats it with the reverence it deserves
while offering a microscopic lens into a startlingly powerful church
institution that, like any organization, is riddled with human fallacy.
On Saturday, I went to Soulpepper’s production of Of Human
Bondage. Soulpepper excels at taking classic pieces and transposing them into
works of playwriting brilliance. Take Parfumerie and last year’s Great Expectations. Gregory Prest was born to
play Philip Carey and this delightfully harrowing treatise on art and love and
poor choices is never tiresome. It can’t be: it is a mirror to which we glimpse
pieces of ourselves. A really humanistic piece. It opens in an operating
theatre where several medical students are seen sawing at a cadaver, when the
tarp over the supposed body is lifted, we realize that it is a cello instead.
Thus begins the interesting juxtaposition of art and science waging war in the
soul of troubled, club-footed Philip Carey.
Like it or not, Maugham’s characters often border on the
despicable because they so intimately mirror our own flaws and
shortcomings. You will hate Mildred, you
will feel greatly for Norah Nesbit and you will want to shake Philip Carey
until his teeth rattle. Perhaps the most
striking part of Of Human Bondage is its conception of art as seen in the
recurring symbol of a Persian carpet. Like life, the carpet is woven with the
most interesting and illustrious design; but the most delicious aspect to it is
the inherent and eventual flaw one finds therein. At the end, when this theme
is culminated in a jubilant climax to clash with the rather bleak events that
went beforehand, it propels Philip to take his new wife into his arms and
dance: despite his physical limitation and to denounce the uncertainty and
despair that befell him.
To rescind all of this brilliance, I see We Will Rock You on Wednesday.
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