Heavy hangs the head that wears the mitre. The resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, upsetting 700 years of Catholic precedent, sent shockwaves across the faith back in 2013. A staunch conservative and traditionalist, Joseph Ratzinger’s departure from the role was an uncharacteristically (and most likely unintentionally) radical act. Then there is the question of his successor, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (or Pope Francis, as we know him today). With his liberal stances on liturgy and drive for reform, Bergoglio seemed Ratzinger’s polar ideological opposite. The Two Popes, written by Anthony McCarten (The Darkest Hour, The Theory of Everything) and directed by Olivier Award winner James Dacre, sees this odd couple meet face-to-face in Rome for the first time, dramatising the friction between Catholicism past and future with rapturous results.
Anton Lesser as Pope Benedict injects an, at best, ambivalent cultural figure with extraordinary pathos. His quiet, resigned gravitas is punctuated with moments of wry humour and childlike glee - there’s something so profoundly human about watching the Holy Father fiddle with a dodgy aerial so he can finally catch the fate of his favourite canine detective, Inspector Rex. His brief respite in the leather armchair of his friend and confidante Sister Brigitta bears a stark contrast to his uneasy occupation of the papal throne or the too-cold marble of the Sistine Chapel, and Lesser embodies this tension beautifully throughout the production.
As Cardinal Bergoglio, the future Pope Francis, Nicholas Woodeson marries an avuncular bearing and easy warmth with fiery conviction and a ready wit - think Mel Brooks if he had (admittedly implausibly) taken holy orders. The second choice of the cardinals when Pope Benedict was elected, his ‘off-the-cuff’ delivery and palpable joie de vivre is both deeply compelling and a phenomenal foil to Benedict’s set-in-his-ways restraint.
When Woodeson and Lesser are in a room together, the back-and-forth is marvellous to behold; indeed, I think the piece might have been even stronger if it had been a two-hander throughout. Lesley Beauchamp and Leaphia Darko play their respective roles of Sister Brigitta and Sister Sophia (a young nun who travels to the Argentinian slums to convince Bergoglio not to resign) with grace and sensitivity, but the roles themselves lack much depth, and it’s hard not to be slightly disappointed that the most prominent female characters are largely there to serve as sounding boards for their patriarch’s motivations and backstory.
Once we enter the palace of Castel Gandolfo, however, the dialogue resonates with the same power as Anne Dudley’s choral score. What begins as an almost headmaster/schoolboy dynamic (right down to Bergoglio not realising his shoelaces are untied) becomes an impassioned dialectic between the progressive and the reactionary, between change and tradition.
This is enhanced by a frankly dazzling script from McCarten, whose dialogue draws attention to the many faces of the papacy, especially in the face of technological advancement. By turns it is a capitalist entity, the rising number of lost souls compared to the US national debt; a figure of celebrity placed alongside the Beatles; Christ incarnate wearing a smartwatch to count his declining steps. When there is comedy (which is surprisingly frequently), it is very conscientiously deployed. There are genuine laugh-out-loud lines throughout (in particular one about German humour delivered by Lesser with much relish), but it enhances rather than detracts from the central tension. If anything, there’s a gallows quality to it, the dry quips of two men who find themselves at the mercy of an institution greater than themselves.
The thing about humanising a figurehead is that in the wrong hands it can very quickly descend into apologia, and while there are moments especially in the first act where the play walks up to that line, McCarten never stops holding his principal players to account. Bergoglio’s agonising confession of his cooperation with the Argentine military junta and its deadly consequences is deeply moving, but also profoundly complicates the principled, outspoken figure we have come to know over the play’s course.
The revelation of the Catholic Church’s rampant sexual abuse hangs pointedly over the entirety of the production like the storm outside Sister Brigitta’s window. Staid, upright Joseph Ratzinger might long for a simpler life in his cottage with his cats and his Mozart, but Pope Benedict remains complicit in his inaction over the conduct of his priests. His confession over a particular example of this is literally unspeakable, whispered inaudible into Bergoglio’ ear. Bergoglio’s reaction is one of genuine horror and contempt, and though he still grants Benedict absolution, as an audience member one doesn’t necessarily feel an obligation to do the same.
These are two deeply flawed men representing a deeply flawed institution, and though McCarten’s portrayal of the Catholic Church remains ultimately redemptive, there’s an ambiguity to the catharsis found in that chapel. It feels very much up to the individual to decide whether these two ‘insufficient vessels’ have paid sufficient penance for their actions. At its heart, The Two Popes is an affecting dialogue about the nature of faith and how it is best served, a mature and nuanced examination of the expectations and pressures of being next to godliness - seek an audience today.