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The Deputy
Brooks Atkinson Theater, NYC, 1964
Role: Father Riccardo Fontana
Wikipedia describes The
Deputy as a controversial drama written in 1963 by Rolf
Hochhuth that portrayed Pope Pius XII as a hypocrite who remained
silent about The Holocaust. Much controversy surrounded the play
worldwide. Accounts of heightened security at the theater and other
information is available at The Brettish
Empire.
A May 1964 Associated Press story tells about
the toll the play took on Jeremy:
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[Jeremy Brett has] the focal role in
Broadway's hit drama, "The Deputy." His degree of involvement is
blistering.
"Each performance is a personal experience. I'm in a state of total
absorption. There are moments when I get almost hysterical."
Since the play opened in February, Brett has lost 14 pounds, his
sleep has become fitful.
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His torment centers on the drama's graphic
description of Germanic atrocities. "I'm a rather idealistic person
who would rather not believe human nature could sink so low. I was
most vulnerable to what the play recalls -- and I can't get used to
it. At the same time, even though it may hurt like hell and be hard
to do, if the theatre is to survive, such topics must be
aired."
Time
magazine describes the play:
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The hero of the play is a priest, a kind of
angry young martyr of burning faith and compassion who deliberately
pins the yellow Star of David to his cassock and eventually goes to
his death in the gas chambers. Father Riccardo Fontana (Jeremy
Brett) is a Jesuit serving with the papal nuncio in Berlin when a
distracted SS lieutenant bursts into an afternoon tea and begins a
semihysterical recital of the statistical horrors of the "factories
of death for people" at Treblinka and Belzec.
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The troubled young priest goes to Rome, where
his aristocratic father and a cardinal friend are close advisers of
the Pope. ... In his uncompromising way, the young priest finally
sees Pius and begs him to damn Hitler openly. The Pope knows
Hitler's wrongs, but he reminds Father Fontana that "a diplomat
must see with discretion."
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As with Troilus and Cressida,
Jeremy had the honor of being the subject of a Hirschfeld
drawing.
Click image to enlarge
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A New York Times review from Feb. 27, 1964, praised JB's performance: "Jeremy
Brett brings fire and dedication to the role of Father
Fontana." The review further noted that the version of The
Deputyperformed on Broadway was shrunk from its original five-act
length, "which would take something like eight hours to perform." This
version lasted a little more than two and a half hours and "sharpens
the plays incendiary thesis." An April 30, 1964, review in the San Mateo (California) Times had this description of the play and Jeremy's performance: The
Deputy is one of the greatest morality plays the 29th Century will
produce. ... "The Deputy" is a cry against the apathy that exists in
all of us.
Brilliantly staged, beautifully acted, the play holds the audience for all of its three hours....
Brett,
a young British actor, turns in a heart-wrenching performance as the
young Jesuit ... who is attached to the papal legation in Berlin in the
early 1940s. He hears from SS Lt. Kurt Gerstein (Thomas A. Carlin) who
has been attached to Auchswitz, a plea for papal intervention, but the
papal nuncio in Berlin is helpless.
He returns later
to Gerstein's apartment and give his cassock and diplomatic passport to
Jacobson, a Jew who has been hiding in the apartment. In return, he
receives the yellow star of David which marked all Jews in German-
occupied countries.
From that time on, Brett becomes
master of the play although not of his own destiny. A tall, frail man,
he glows with ascetic cause.
... Father Fontana's final
meeting [with the pope] where he pins on the star of David and joins
the Italian Jews leaving Rome is electric.
Internet Broadway Database page |
