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Review - The Grand Inquisitor - Religion Used for Political Gain and Power

New York Times

Holy Man and Holier in a Battle for Power
Peter Brook’s production of “The Grand Inquisitor,” at the New York Theater Workshop, is less an interpretation than a straightforward presentation of Dostoevsky’s parable of worldly and spiritual power

Newsday

'The Grand Inquisitor': Jesus at the Inquisition

Bloomberg.com

Brook Tortures Dostoyevsky in Staging of `Grand Inquisitor': John Simon
"The Grand Inquisitor,'' adapted from a segment of "The Brothers Karamazov'' at Peter Brook's behest, is showing at New York Theatre Workshop in the East Village, a favorite venue for outlandish offerings.

Variety

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
As delivered by a magisterial Bruce Myers lecturing a mute Christ, the harsh but brilliantly argued critique of the bedrock positions of Christian theology lands with a shock.

Back Stage

The Grand Inquisitor reviewed by David A. Rosenberg
Although this is more a rhetorical exercise than a play in the traditional sense of that word, the evening engages willing listeners as two men challenge each other.

TheaterMania

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
Peter Brook's staging of an excerpt from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is a rapt and challenging experience.

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
The Grand Inquisitor, the C.I.C.T./Théatre des Bouffes du Nord piece that Theatre for a New Audience and New York Theatre Workshop are coproducing at the latter’s East Village mainstage, is obviously a frugal producer’s dream. But it has so many strikes against it at the outset for the average audience member, on paper the project looks like one big scribble. . . .

nytheatre.com

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
Review: Hunchback

CurtainUp

Review: The Grand Inquisitor
Very well-written and executed but ultimately it's a purely intellectual exercise

New York Times

Contagious Disturbances on the Home Front, While War Rages Over There
Adult actors playing children onstage is usually about as appealing as adults acting like children offstage. But Gio Perez handles this delicate task with an aplomb.

New York Post

'Trees' leaves much amiss
There's a lot of communication going on in Steven Levenson's "The Language of Trees," but precious little understanding. The characters in this tale of an American translator imprisoned in Iraq talk at, but not really to, each other. Lapsing into magical realism in its final sections, including an imagined encounter between the...

Associated Press

'Trees' Looks at a Family Fractured by Iraq War
A family fractured by the Iraq war is at the center of ''The Language of Trees,'' the impressive second offering of Roundabout Underground, a new-play initiative that brings the work of fledgling writers to the stage.

Variety

Review: The Language of Trees
In the 5½ years since the conflict began, many playwrights have weighed in on the Iraq war from military, political and ideological perspectives, but relatively few have focused on the home front. Steven Levenson explores the emotional minefield of those left behind with sensitivity in his stylistically ambitious but uneven debut....

Back Stage

The Language of Trees reviewed by Adam R. Perlman
The Language of Trees, Roundabout Underground's domestic drama set during the first months of the Iraq war, tries hard to be sensitive.

TheaterMania

Review: The Language of Trees
Steven Levenson's uneven new play examines the impact of the war in Iraq on the family of an American translator

Talkin' Broadway

Review: The Language of Trees
If you fear the imminent death, or at least the long-term hospitalization, of issue-oriented theatre, Steven Levenson’s preachy and pretentious new play The Language of Trees is not for you. This Roundabout Underground show, in the intimate Black Box Theatre at the Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theatre, is the polar opposite of the youth-oriented initiative’s first offering last year at this time, Speech & Debate: While that show was highly cool, subtly sexy, and up-to-the-moment alert, this one is covered in Halloween-ready cobwebs. . . .

Walk into New York Theatre Workshop for The Grand Inquisitor, which NYTW is presenting in collaboration with Theatre for a New Audience, and you'll find that all that's on stage are a small black crate and a black stool that are at opposite corners of a gray square. The piece, adapted by Marie-Hélène Estienne from a section of Dostoevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov," consists of one actor (Jake M. Smith) sitting silently on the crate while another, Bruce Myers, clad in a black cassock for most of the production speaks. It may not sound like much, but the piece and production, directed by the legendary Peter Brook, is one of the most intellectually fascinating works to come to New York's stages in a long while.

"Inquisitor" takes place in Seville during the height of the Spanish Inquisition. Myers plays the cardinal Grand Inquisitor who has arrested Christ (Smith), who has returned to Earth and performed miracles in front of grateful and worshiping Spaniards. His presence brings the cardinal to ask "Why, then, have you come to disturb us?" For just under an hour, the cardinal goes on to describe how the Catholic Church has worked to undo the damage done by Christ when he first appeared in human form. The cardinal believes Christ's gift of free will and choice in religion to be more of a punishment to mankind than a blessing, and explains how the church's work over 15 centuries has been to make men and women happier by removing the onus of choice from their lives.

It's troubling rhetoric and there's more. The cardinal goes on to describe how torture and other methods employed by the Inquisition and the Catholic Church in general have been about destroying a sense of freedom.

What's most disturbing in "Inquisitor," though, is how palatable it all sounds in Myers' delivery. The actor never plays the cardinal as a villain. Instead, he plays the cardinal as a rather matter-of-fact man with total conviction in what he's saying. Here is a man who rarely raises his voice despite his growing consternation with Christ's silence (Smith's concentration on his fellow's performer's words and movements only draws theatergoers further into the piece). Gestures are used with care and it's hard not to be mesmerized by this piece of almost businessman-like oratory.

Audience fascination, of course, is the point of "Inquisitor." The artists have created a piece which draws audiences almost into agreement with reprehensible tenets and practices, Brook and Estienne are asking theatergoers to contemplate the ways in which religions can be perverted for political means. As an election day approaches, it's an important lesson to be reminded of.

Brook's production, lit with nuance and care by Philippe Vialatte, never provides any theatrical pyrotechnics, but that doesn't matter. This is a work that shatters through words and delivery alone.

---- Andy Propst

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The Grand Inquisitor plays at New York Theatre Workshop (79 East 4th Street). Performances are Tuesday at 7pm; Wednesday through Friday at 8pm; Saturday at 2 and 8pm; and Sunday at 3 and 7pm. Tickets are $75.00 and can be purchased by calling 212-239-6200 or by visiting www.telecharge.com. Further information is available online at www.nytw.org or www.tfana.org.

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