The Power and the Glory

Departing from the experimentalism of Pirandello and the social satire of Wilde, Repertory Boston has added a competent adaptation of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory to its collection. The addition is a fine one: this stage version of one of the better recent novels stimulates thought, and receives, under Stephen Aaron's direction, a careful and well-paced performance.

Against the background of Mexico during the anti-clerical campaign of the 1930's, the last priest in a province fights his drunkenness and cowardice, all the time facing the choice between escape to freedom and staying on to minister to the peasants, who have stuck to their primitive Catholicism through years of socialist poverty. Twice he has a chance to escape: the first time he answers the call of a dying woman, and later he returns from across the border to the aid of a dying man, only to find that he has been trapped by the police, who have sought him from the opening scene.

Throughout the play, his ideological and practical adversary is the police lieutenant, a good fellow who has swallowed the party line of building heaven on earth, and who regurgitates said line a little too often. As the lieutenant, Dean Gitter is properly obnoxious, and convinces one that he sincerely believes in the socialist doctrines he preaches. In his final conversation with the priest (adequately though not excitingly portrayed by Michael Mabry), he successfully conveys the impression that some human element is lacking in Utopian thought, while the priest presents the case for suffering.

The other principals range from good to mediocre. Wendell Ede and Ray Reinhardt as the dentist and the schoolmaster are both fine, and most of the other male leads are adequate, but the performance of the women do not come up to the standards set by the men. Robert Skinner's sets, on the other hand, are outstanding. His oft-visited street presents a facade of the town's buildings, and the facade lifts for the scenes taking place in the dentist's office, a peasant hut, a hotel room, the town prison, and a restaurant across the border. Each of these sets is imaginative, and lends solid support to the scenes therein.

It is Mr. Aaron's sure hand, however, that provides the necessary finesse. He handles the group scenes especially effectively; indeed, the best moment of the evening comes in scene four, when the priest is saying a makeshift Mass in the hut of the woman whose daughter he fathered. As the townspeople, genuflecting on the dirt floor, devoutly listen to the Latin words, Stephen Randall '60 (who does an excellent job in several bit parts) bursts into the hut with a warning that the police are three minutes away. The shock of this pronouncement frightens even the audience.

The Power and the Glory, then, while not a great play, is a good play; the same may be said of the performance. Repertory Boston has undertaken a difficult assignment, what with a cast of twenty-eight plus extras-and six different sets. That the group gives a sound performance of a worthwhile play is heartening and encouraging.