The Power and the Glory (A Play) - Softcover

Dennis Cannan; Pierre Bost

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0573614237 ISBN 13: 9780573614231

Publisher: Samuel French, Inc., 2011

Tragedy

Denis Cannan and Pierre Bost, adapted from Graham Greene.

Characters: 28 male, 9female, extras

Unit set, frags., travellers.

In the revolutionary days of Mexico a priest decides to stay with his people in disguise rather than escape. It is little consolation, however. For wherever the priest goes with the Mass and the Sacraments, the police are sure to follow executing those who harbored him. Though he is a humanly weak priest, with a past of many sins, he has moments of strength. He steals a bottle of wine from a drunken official, and ends in prison. Released, he travels to another province where he is given food and clothes, and the people make religious processions. At ease again, he slips back into his old pleasures. At the moment of his escape, however, he chooses to go instead to a dying man. Here he is ambushed, and executed. "A wonderful play. . . . Straight into the heart of a sublime theme."-N. Y. Times.

Review:

How does good spoil, and how can bad be redeemed? In his penetrating novel The Power and the Glory, Graham Greene explores corruption and atonement through a priest and the people he encounters. In the 1930s one Mexican state has outlawed the Church, naming it a source of greed and debauchery. The priests have been rounded up and shot by firing squad--save one, the whisky priest. On the run, and in a blur of alcohol and fear, this outlaw meets a dentist, a banana farmer, and a village woman he knew six years earlier. For a while, he is accompanied by a toothless man--whom he refers to as his Judas and does his best to ditch. Always, an adamant lieutenant is only a few hours behind, determined to liberate his country from the evils of the church.

On the verge of reaching a safer region, the whisky priest is repeatedly held back by his vocation, even though he no longer feels fit to perform his rites: "When he was gone it would be as if God in all this space between the sea and the mountains ceased to exist. Wasn't it his duty to stay, even if they despised him, even if they were murdered for his sake? even if they were corrupted by his example?"

As his sins and dangers increase, the broken priest comes to confront the nature of piety and love. Still, when he is granted a reprieve, he feels himself sliding into the old arrogance, slipping it on like the black gloves he used to wear. Greene has drawn this man--and all he encounters--vividly and viscerally. He may have said The Power and the Glory was "written to a thesis," but this brilliant theological thriller has far more mysteries--and troubling ideals--than certainties. --Joannie Kervran Stangeland

From the Back Cover:

“Greene’s masterpiece.” –John Updike

“Graham Greene had wit and grace and character and story and a transcendent universal compassion that places him for all time in the ranks of world literature.” –John Le Carré

• Publisher: Samuel French, Inc.
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0573614237
• ISBN 13: 9780573614231
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96