Dany Margolies – Arts In LA
Most Westerners of a certain age, certainly most Catholics, recall the startling day in 1978 when we learned that Pope John Paul I had died 33 days after the puff of white smoke announced his election to the papacy. Very few people, if anyone, knew the exact cause of death. Whether the Curia, the Vatican’s governmental cabinet, considered it unseemly to probe or the answers didn’t favor a perfectly innocent explanation, any investigations into his death seemed likewise to die swiftly. Read more…
Myron Meisel – The Hollywood Reporter
Organized around the star wattage of David Suchet, the celebrated and prolific British theater actor best known worldwide for his 74 television films as Agatha Christie’s detective Hercule Poiret, The Last Confession makes for a rather wan touring vehicle for his talents. Read more…
Bob Verini – Stage Raw
The current tenant at the Ahmanson, Roger Craig’s The Last Confession, made me think about Charlton Heston and Jorge Mario Bergoglio.
The Heston musings may be the more surprising. But however you may feel about his stature as an actor, or his latter-year turn to the right and NRA leadership, Heston and the Ahmanson were prominently associated in the public’s mind in the 1970s and 1980s, thanks to his rarely letting a year go by without appearing there in a play of substance. Read more…
Terry Morgan – Talkin’ Broadway
Roger Crane’s The Last Confession has a doozy of an opening statement: “Forgive me, father, for I have sinned. I have killed the emissary of God.” The speaker refers to Pope John Paul I, who died under mysterious circumstances in 1978. It sounds compelling in theory—somebody murdered a pope in recent history? Read more…
Now running through July 6.