LUTHER
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The play, if not the production, is intriguing. Osborne’s drama spans Luther’s life from the time he gives up the prospect of law school to join the Augustinian order, in 1506, until the excommunicated Luther becomes a father, in 1530. Along the way, Luther wears the hats of scholar, penitent, firebrand, heretic, divine apologist, victim of irregularity, misunderstood son, and loving father. Unfortunately, Alpert wears each of these hats with a uniform and absentminded seriousness.
One thing I’m still trying to figure out is why Osborne chose to focus now and again on Luther’s constipation. I can only imagine that he meant to make some sort of parallel with, I don’t know, the way that Luther’s intense exegesis of scripture would build to a point of doctrinal blockage that could only be evacuated by faith. Which, by extrapolation, would make the Reformation the great release from 15 centuries of impacted dogma imposed by the Roman Catholic church. Of course, I’m only speculating, but what else can I do when a production neither interprets nor offers me the tools of interpretation?
But Cole’s performance is only one stake in the ground for a tent that’s flapping in the wind. Luther is an interior drama, not of world events so much as of the vision of the man who shaped those events. And without that vision, or the shades of light and darkness in the mind that formed that vision, you don’t have much of a drama.
