Weather Tonight: 9°c Light showers Morning: 14°c Overcast

Five of the Best...Shows
  1. The Kreutzer Sonata
  2. The Rise And Fall Of Little Voice
  3. Endgame
  4. Annie Get Your Gun
  5. Bedroom Farce

Critics' Choice

Film

Andrew O'Hagan

quoteNew Moon is nothing if not an international advertisement for the hungry virtues of virginity and young people can’t get enough of itquote

Andrew O'Hagan The Twilight Saga: New Moon Theatre

Henry Hitchings

quoteA smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusionquote

Henry Hitchings Cock Restaurants

David Sexton

quoteKitchen W8 is a bargain for this area, if such sophistication is what you crave quote

David Sexton Kitchen W8

Reader reviews

Film

Adam, Harrow

quoteToo long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effectsquote

2012 Theatre

Rob, London

quoteThis is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flawsquote

The Habit Of Art Music

Bernard, London

quoteAlex has a strong powerful voice and was faultless, she is far better now than she was on the X-Factorquote

Alexandra Burke

Theatre & comedy reviews London,

The Last Confession

Your rating
one startwo starthree starfour starfive star
Click on a star to rate
Theatre Royal, Haymarket
Haymarket, SW1Y 4HT

Evening Standard rating Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Evening Standard rating Reader rating
 Add your review

Dir: David Jones.
Cast: David Suchet, Michael Jayston, Richard O'Callaghan, Roger May, Bernard Lloyd, Stuart Milligan, Clifford Rose, Charles Kay, John Franklyn-Robbins, Bruce Purchase, Michael Cronin, Joseph Mydell, Joseph Long, Paul Foster, Maroussia Frank, Christopher Mellows


Description: David Suchet stars in Roger Crane's thriller about the death of Pope John Paul I after just 33 days, investigating the dramatic tensions, crises of faith and political manoeuvrings that occurred in the Vatican.


Trains: Tube: Piccadilly Circus Overground network

Phone: 0870400 0626

 
Please wait the page is loading extra content
  • Show details
  • Hide details
  • Book Online
  • Show map
Close X

Directions

 

Brooding Suchet brings charisma to the confessor

By Nicholas de Jongh, Evening Standard  03.07.07
 
Beguiling whodunnit: David Suchet plays a cardinal torn between faith and worldly ambition in The Last Confession

Beguiling whodunnit: David Suchet plays a cardinal torn between faith and worldly ambition in The Last Confession

The Last Confession

Conspiracy drama: David Suchet plays the charismatic and brooding Cardinal Benelli

Look here too

I would never have dreamed that the death of an obscure 20th-century Pope could provide inspiration for a beguiling theatrical whodunnit or at least a "did-anyone-do-it?" The Last Confession, premiered and much admired at Chichester's Festival Theatre in May, reveals the limitations of my dreams.

Its author, New York lawyer Roger Crane, regards the death of John Paul I, who died in 1978 of an apparent heart attack 33 days after his installation, as the murderous finale in a Vatican conspiracy drama and the sign of fierce ideological conflict between this radical Pope and reactionary cardinals.

The Last Confession does not merely delve into skulduggery. Crane, whose dialogue often sounds as if sententiously minted by some Hollywood scriptwriter familiar with religious epics, offers no information about what published sources he relied on to level his sensational charges. He does, however, suggest that John Paul's greatest supporter, the self-centred Cardinal Benelli, was prone to such nagging ambition to become Pope that he persuaded himself to be politic and abandon demands for an inquiry into John Paul's death.

The play takes the distinctly tired form of the flashback, from the moribund moment when David Suchet's charismatic, brooding Benelli decides to make a final confession. The last five years of his life begin to be replayed before us.

William Dudley's grand, impressionistic design conceives the Vatican as an imposing prison, with grille-like walls and marble-framed doors, set against a photographic back-projection of St Peter's. David Jones's evocative production hustles smoothly through the dusky corridors of power and reeks of suave menace as cardinals prowl and cluster in false shows of deference.

The laboriously over-extended first half shows the closing phase of Paul VI's undecisive papacy in rickety decline and fall. Something is most amiss. Why does Stuart Milligan's big bruiser of an American, Bishop Marcinkus, plan to sell the Catholic bank of Venice? Will Bernard Lloyd's blustering, conservative Cardinal Villot succeed in getting the liberal Benelli dispatched from the Vatican to distant Zambia or Paraguay? Instead, though, Benelli becomes the influential power-broker who plays the decisive role in securing the election of Richard O'Callaghan's timid, child-like John Paul I.

Having attempted one day to rid himself of cardinals obstructive of reform, the Pope dies the same night. Crane turns to thriller-formatting, with Benelli taking the unofficial role of investigator and chief accuser.

Suchet's impressive Cardinal, a rueful figure who cannot come to terms with his longing for worldly glory at the expense of religious faith, unpacks his heart to Michael Jayston's authoritative, mysterious confessor.

In closing moments of grim irony he burns his confession, as if to obliterate his imperious ego.

• For information, call 0870 4000 626.

Related articles

More


Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

 

Reader reviews (1)

 Add your review

I have not seen the play but this afternoon listened to it on radio 4. It was wonderful and drama at its best.

- Jane Kendall, wotton-under-edge, England


Add your comment

 

Your email address will not be published

Terms and conditions make text area bigger You have  characters left.


 
 


 
 
London's Weather
Tonight
Light showers
9°c
Morning
Overcast
14°c
5 day forecast
 
 

Daily Mail Mail on Sunday Travel Mail This is Money Metro

Loot | Jobsite | Homes & property | London jobs | FindaProperty.com | Primelocation.com | Educate London | Holiday Villas