On Stage
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph T. Shipley A Vital, Challenging Dramatization Of The Trial of Jesus for Moderns Between Two Thieves. By Warner LeRoy. From Proces a Jesus by Diego Fabbri. Presented by Paul...
...The second part of the play grows more intense and more presently pertinent...
...James J. Frawley makes natural the brawny but not brainy fisherman Simon, called Peter, the "rock" on which the Church stands...
...In the informal presentation of the drama, little "acting" is called for...
...The apostles John, Peter and Thomas speak in their human frailty, believing—though they had doubted and denied...
...He is interrupted by a rationalist, a "scientific" unbeliever—who in turn is challenged by the woman he lives with, a modern Magdalene...
...For, as the Judge is about to pronounce the verdict—that Jesus had broken Roman law and was justly condemned by the Romans—members of the audience break in...
...He turned thoughts of freedom from bondage...
...And out of the contending passions and faith, the dogmatism and prejudice and yearning, in the turbulence of sharp drama, wells the essential rouse of human brotherhood...
...Jesus did not turn from Judaism: "Love is the fulfilling of the Law...
...the characters just have to be natural...
...Joseph tells how he rejected his pregnant wife, until a dream told him she would give birth to the savior of his race—and he believed the dream...
...Then Ugo Betti wrote powerful plays that question or probe the basic values...
...the strident sarcasm of a Christian Fronter, who reminds the Jews that they are not the only persecuted people ("There are also the Niggers—Negroes") and that some Jews are very rich—and adds that his brother, too, had been killed by the Nazis...
...Mary testifies to the mystery of her conception...
...But to a people sore oppressed, beginning to rise against that oppression, Jesus preached resignation, submission: "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's...
...of salvation, from this life to a life beyond...
...Muni Seroff is quietly effective as the Judge...
...And it was, Judas declares, when he found that Jesus would not be the deliverer of his people from the oppressors, that he decided to turn him in...
...And the cast rises to the richness of the play...
...And now, at the York Playhouse, Diego Fabbri searches into the hold of faith on human conduct...
...First, Luigi Pirandello made vivid drama of the problem of appearances, the conflict between illusion and reality...
...Bickering among the participants soon interrupts the trial, with protests that the facts of law cannot be separated from the man...
...At the York Playhouse...
...the quiet faith of a blind man...
...Presented by Paul Libin and Mr...
...It begins as just that...
...It is very hard to select among them for mention...
...Thomas Aldredge as the prosecutor, Ford Rainey as Pilate, and Frederic Rolf as Judas, are more impassioned...
...Starting with a subject from which playwrights—and playgoers—might shrug away, he draws the audience into a gripping problem of our own times...
...Directed by Mr...
...Vivid in action, challenging in idea, strikingly effective in presentation, Between Two Thieves is a drama of great depth and high power...
...The play was more simply entitled, in the original, The Trial of Jesus...
...As Mary Magdalene onstage, and especially as the modern Magdalene in the audience, Joyce Van Patten gives emotion to her faith...
...In a seemingly spontaneous fashion, with volunteers from the audience, a judge and a prosecutor are selected, and defense attorneys for Jesus, for Pontius Pilate and for Caiaphas, head of the Sanhedrin of the Jews...
...Deftly adapted, simply and vividly presented, onstage and amidst the audience, Between Two Thieves is vital and challenging drama...
...Then other voices, in flaring emotions, thrust into the argument: the agony of a prodigal son not yet returned...
...The Sanhedrin had not condemned a Jew in 200 years...
...THE LATINS, who have been noted for short stories flaming with erotic excitement, and for motion picture stars of similar stir, have in strange contrast been leaders in the theater of ideas...
...Of course, this is the subtlest acting...
...To the suffering Jewish people, who 30 years later broke into fierce rebellion, it was this voice of appeasement that was intolerable...
...A man who turns out to be a priest speaks for the fuller faith...
...Judas in vehement terms shifts the Jewish attack on Jesus from religious to political grounds...
...Some Jewish refugees, wondering why their race has been persecuted for almost 2,000 years, decide to requestion the old issues, to hold a sort of trial, to see whether the Jews brought about the death of Jesus, whether according to the laws and mores of the time he was justly sentenced to die on the cross...
Vol. 43 • February 1960 • No. 8
