Religion and the Quest for Understanding Among Men
SHIPLEY, JOSEPH T.
On STAGE By Joseph ? Shipley Religion and the Quest for Understanding Among Men The Devil's Advocate. Written, directed and produced by Dore Senary. From the novel by Morris L. West. Settings...
...The Cardinal knows that Meredith, a spiritually empty man, is afraid to die: He "never loved a woman, hated a man or pitied a child...
...At the Billy Rose Theatre...
...but he cannot accept the faith that might sustain him and plunges to disaster...
...Tresa Hughes admirably conveys the love of Nina for Nerone and for her son...
...Rome sends a "devil's advocate" to investigate...
...Though not a great play, it challenges both the mind and the spirit and lifts the theater from the level of mere entertainment to a richer and more rewarding stimulation...
...And Sam Levene as the doctor and Leo Genn as the prelate are intelligent and suggest a peace that has passed through anguish...
...The play's major fault, ironically, is an excess of mental stimulation...
...Four men quicken to life in this thoughtful drama...
...We do not hag all of them, but we come back pleasantly flushed from the exercise...
...All the main characters are portrayed without sensationalism or sentimentality...
...The village of Gemello Minore in Calabria has seen phenomena that may be miraculous...
...It begins with a question which it never answers, but while searching for the answer, we chase several other problems across fields and over rocks...
...The beatification of Nerone can wait...
...Edward Mulhare is devoted as the soldier and lover Nerone...
...It is not so much a religious inquiry we watch upon the stage as human beings striving to understand and to achieve their proper goals...
...He left a mistress, Nina, and a son, now 16 years old...
...what matters another century or two...
...It is therefore pleasant to have the gap filled by The Devil's Advocate...
...The painter protests that, in this instance at last, his intentions are pure...
...Michael Kane is both caustic and poignant as the homosexual...
...a treadmill rolls the furniture off and on, while a backdrop changes the locale—swift, deft, effective...
...Olive Deering successfully projects the fires within the Contessa...
...Between the many scenes, the stage darkens...
...The Cardinal hopes that close contact with the villagers will give Meredith spiritual enrichment before his body fails him...
...The author has himself produced and directed the play, and out of a difficult subject he has woven a literate and moving drama...
...Finally, the boy is saved and the prelate, with a sense of fulfilment, smiles at death...
...The Jew and the prelate are drawn to one another and Meredith absorbs some of the doctor's sincere emotion...
...In the village, the prelate finds that life is a tangled skein beyond his unraveling...
...Those who seek to relieve themselves of its burdens find they have lost its comforts too...
...Meredith struggles vainly to overcome the life-habits of the Contessa...
...Faith, we are shown, is both a comfort and a burden...
...its citizens are clamoring for the beatification of Giacomo Nerone, in whose name the cures have come...
...While only impatient youth rails at the world for not providing a theatrical masterpiece a month, even an accustomed oldster may lament the passing of an entire season without a single new native drama to whet the intelligence...
...In this respect, belief in God is like belief in democracy: Democracy acknowledges rights but entails obligations, and those who try to slough off the obligations will find they have shed the rights as well...
...In the play, the ever dissatisfied Contessa and her house guest, a homosexual painter, are rivals for the affections of Nerone's son...
...Something of this long-range view settles upon the audience...
...Nerone had been betrayed to the Communists, who shot him, by the jealous Contessa who lives on the hill above the village...
...We are looking upon eternal questions, not the oscillating urgencies of the hour...
...The production itself deserves a word...
...Settings by Jo Mielziner...
...The man selected is an English prelate, Monsignor Meredith, who is himself severely stricken with cancer...
...Nina, only partly sensing these tensions, works for the village doctor, a percipient and compassionate but lonely Jew...
Vol. 44 • April 1961 • No. 14
