Mass Appeal

Published Tuesday 4 April 2006 at 10:30 by Gerald Berkowitz

In Bill C Davis’ 1980 drama an experienced if somewhat gone-to-seed parish priest must guide a hotheaded young seminarian through diocesan politics and the need to temper his fervour to avoid alienating his parish, while the younger man must reawaken the veteran’s almost buried faith and sense of mission.

As that summary suggests, there’s a formulaic quality to the play and if this production too rarely comes alive, much of the fault lies in writing that never strays very far from cliche of character and situation, or beyond the shallowest surface of the issues it raises.

Given the sketchiest of characters to work with, director and actors admirably resist any temptation to slip into easy stereotypes. There is very little of the Barry Fitzgerald/Milo O’Shea cheery Irish priest in Kevin Colson’s well-meaning older man who is first discovering how ineffectual he is, nor any conventional angry young man to Brendan Patricks’ earnest innocent. But the attempts by the actors and director Drew Ackroyd to search out individualised characterisations merely expose how very little the playwright gave them and neither character ever becomes real enough for us to care about them.