Reviews

The Last Confession

A play based on actual events offers no Roman holiday from Vatican corruption.

David Suchet in Roger Crane's The Last Confession, directed by Jonathan Church, at Center Theatre Group's Ahmanson Theatre.
David Suchet in Roger Crane's The Last Confession, directed by Jonathan Church, at Center Theatre Group's Ahmanson Theatre.
(© Craig Schwartz)

David Suchet is back in L.A. headlining Roger Crane's did-he-or-didn't-he drama The Last Confession at the Ahmanson Theatre. Crane is an attorney. Confession — his first play — is touring the world following its 2007 debut at the U.K.'s Chichester Theatre Festival. Whether or not the playwright has seen Amadeus, he is — to some extent — in playwright Peter Shaffer's debt. And in Suchet's, without whose participation an already bloodless play would be positively anemic.

Basing his events on the suspicious death of Pope John Paul I who died in 1878 after a mere 33 days into his reign, Crane is trying to position a whydunnit in the midst of an examination of shifting Vatican values. Incendiary fodder, certainly, with John Paul I running afoul of traditional Catholic leadership, including a Bishop with mafia ties. But despite a handful of interesting performances and handsome technical trappings, Jonathan Church's production does not succeed as a detective story, a political yarn, or as a socio-psychological examination.

Playing the kingmaker Cardinal Benelli, Suchet turns in his usual workmanlike performance with agony and irony fully present, but even he sometimes feels like a mouthpiece for one of the play's conflicting positions. This is less a case of feeling like the characters are explicitly lecturing us than of an abundance of dialogue that feels like an ethics debate. Since a couple of the play's more interesting characters depart early and do not return (Richard O'Callaghan's John Paul most significantly), Suchet is left to shoulder the load amidst a largely interchangeable array of viperish Cardinals.

The gears of the church's machinery are grinding jaggedly along even before John Paul I enters the scene. The Vatican Bank is steeped in scandal and Pope Paul VI (Donald Douglas, droll and stately) is in poor health and largely incapable of implementing the reforms that the Second Vatican Council has been pushing amidst considerable opposition. Suchet's Cardinal Benelli not only has the current Pope's ear and trust, he is — in the eyes of many — Paul's logical successor. Benelli disagrees, so he engineers the appointment of a "country priest" from Venice, Cardinal Albino Luciani, the future John Paul I (O'Callaghan).

Naive though he most certainly is, John Paul establishes himself as an all-too-human pontiff rather than a godlike emissary. Gone is the formal "we." The new Pope likes his sweets, and elects to walk to his coronation rather than be carried procession-style. The established conservative Cardinals detest him and refuse to take him seriously, prompting John Paul to start cleaning house, sending his opponents to assignments outside of the Vatican or into retirement. His clash with the powerful Cardinal Villot (Nigel Bennett) likely seals his fate, and the man known as the "Smiling Pope" is found deceased sitting up in his bed after barely a month on the job. No autopsy is conducted.

Benelli, who had left John Paul to his own devices following the coronation, now goes into sleuth mode to verify his suspicions that the Pope was murdered. Suchet, who logged so many hours as Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot for the BBC, is on as equally steady ground as a guilt-stricken Italian prelate-turned-righteous-gumshoe, but Crane sees the investigation seems almost perfunctory. The Last Confession is headed toward a grander realization about the nature of faith, which may be why so much of Crane's dialog offers debate-like pronouncements and counter-pronouncements about the function of religion.

If the stakes are lofty for Benelli, the bulk of the Catholic Church's high officers seem far less concerned. The Last Confession employs a very large cast with a series of corrupt and/or overstuffed Cardinals crossing swords first with John Paul and, after his death, with Benelli. In a different playwright's hands, the war over the Church's soul — and attendant casualties — might have made for dirty fun. Not so much here, and we end up missing O'Callaghan's folksy prelate more than we should.

Designer William Dudley configures the Vatican as a series of large, tower-like gates through which the priests pass and roam. Peter Mumford's lighting and Chris Cronin and Josh Liebert's sound design strike the appropriate tones.
Suchet's work aside, the tale almost feels like it should have been a movie replete with dark corridors haunted by devious doges whose souls are as black as their garments are red. Dan Brown, where fore art thou?