“Wafted by a favouring gale
As one sometimes is in trances,
To a height that few can scale,
Save by long and weary dances;
surely, never had a male
Under such like circumstances
So adventurous tale
Which may rank with most romances.”

- W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado

In Peter Luke’s 1968 play Hadrian VII** a miserable little man named Frederick William Rolfe* (Doug Ryan) makes a startling and meteoric rise from abject poverty in a squalid bedsitter in London to the Throne of St. Peter in Rome, becoming Pope Hadrian VII. Once on the Holy See, he issues revolutionary edicts to bring the Church more in line with the teachings of Jesus. This makes him unpopular to the point where he is assassinated – in the church just like St. Thomas á Becket and Archbishop Óscar Romero.

Then in one of those crummy tricks of defantasification*** that the 20th century loved so well, we learn in the last scene that the whole thing has merely been a story that Rolfe has been writing.

John Hadden has mounted an exciting production of this challenging and often downright baffling play, which, for those very reasons, along with the demands of the title role, is rarely produced. He has used the available talent at the Theatre Company at Hubbard Hall, along with the space in the Hall’s new Freight Depot Theatre, to their best advantage. He gets really thrilling performances from Ryan in the title role, from Richard Howes as reactionary Ulsterman and journalist Jeremiah Sant, and from Hubbard Hall newcomer Peter Delocis as Dr. Talacryn, Bishop of Caerleon, Agnes Dixon, Rolfe’s London cleaning lady, and the First Bailiff . Offering solid support are Kim Johnson Turner as Rolfe’s landlady Nancy Crowe, and Benjie White as Dr. Courtleigh, Cardinal Archbishop of Pimlico and the Second Bailiff.

I enjoyed myself thoroughly, but I cannot imagine what someone walking in off the street would make of the proceedings. I try to warn my Gentle Readers when shows require “homework” and Hadrian VII definitely falls into that category. You will enjoy it more if, at the very least, you read the Wikipedia entry for Frederick Rolfe (1830-1913). If you want to delve deeper, I have included a bibliography at the end of this review. These books are relatively accessible through the miracle of electronic interlibrary loan and/or abebooks.com.

Luke based his play on the 1904 novel Hadrian the Seventh and other works by Rolfe, who also went by the title Baron Corvo, along with a host of other pseudonyms. Born an Anglican, Rolfe converted to Roman Catholicism at the age of 26, and from then until his death futilely sought ordination to the priesthood, incurring notorious debts in the process. He often went by Fr. Rolfe, shortening his first name to be identical with the abbreviation for “Father,” the title that priests commonly use, in order to confuse and defy.

While there is no doubt that Rolfe’s work was highly autobiographical, he did choose a different name, another pseudonym if you will, for his protagonist, calling him George Arthur Rose. Luke calls his protagonist Frederick William Rolfe, and assigns Rose to the character of a young seminarian (played here by Ben Katagiri), deemed, as Rolfe was, to have “no vocation,” who Hadrian VII takes on as his private Chaplain.

Confused yet? Don’t worry, you’ll stay that way through most of this review. The most difficult distinction to make here is when I am referring to Luke’s fictional Rolfe and when I am referring to the real one, especially when, as in the paragraph above, a statement applies to both. The subtitle of A.J.A. Symons’ 1934 “experiment in biography” The Quest for Corvo: Genius or Charlatan sums up quite neatly the central question of Luke’s play: Who the heck was this guy?

What Hadden has mounted at Hubbard Hall is not exactly what Luke wrote. The script is performed verbatim, but the stage directions and character descriptions are largely ignored. There are pros and cons to this. Every director and cast must make a play their own, and a lot has changed since the show was first presented in 1968, but there are sins of omission here that I quibble with.

First, Luke’s Rolfe is very definitely an Englishman – only the second such to sit on the Throne of St. Peter, hence his choice of the name Hadrian, after the only other English Pope, Hadrian or Adrian IV (c. 1100–1159) who started a whole pile of trouble when he handed over Ireland to King Henry II of England – a very important point as it is an irate Irish Protestant who assassinates Rolfe’s Pope. While Hadden has some actors affect “foreign” accents, including the Irishman, all of the English characters speak with American accents.

Another thing Luke makes clear is that Rolfe is a very nervous, compulsive man who chain smokes, continually rolling his own cigarettes “tucking the ends in with a pencil.” He carries a penknife “with which he prepares his apples, sharpens his pencils, etc.” He is “myopic and can hardly see without his plain, steel-rimmed spectacles.” I am quoting from Luke’s note, included in the published edition of the script and I assume in the acting edition too, entitled A Note on the Appearance/Behaviorisms of Rolfe/Hadrian. Hadden and Ryan choose to ignore almost all of these physical quirks. Granted, times have changed and smoking on stage, is now considered decidedly un-PC and would be unpleasant in as small a space as the Freight Depot Theatre, but another compulsive behavior could have been substituted. And why no glasses?

But Hadden and Ryan have uncovered their own interpretation of the lead role, and it works quite well. Ryan can be very, very funny, and there are plenty of opportunities here for him to prove that, but Rolfe/Hadrian is complex role that allows Ryan to display his ability to be more than just a clown. His shifts from Papal pomposity to schizoid paranoia are visceral and breathtaking.

One of Hadden’s tweaks to the original which works brilliantly is the triple-casting of Delocis so that he is almost always on stage with Ryan, like embodiment of one of Rolfe’s many personalities. Delocis has a background in improvisation and sketch comedy that stands him in good stead here as he changes costumes and genders at lightning speed. His second act appearance as Agnes was a comic highlight that literally stopped the show as the audience gave Delocis a round of applause. That break actually worked to his advantage, as it granted him a few more seconds to change back into his clerical robes and reappear almost immediately as Dr. Talacryn.

In his director’s notes in the program, Hadden relates a false memory he had that Rolfe was in a strait jacket in an insane asylum, not in a shabby London bed-sit, while he wrote his Papal Fantasy. That was the impression that the play had left on him and one he incorporates intriguingly here, with the help of Costume Designer Karen Koziol, by having the sleeves of Rolfe/Hadrian’s papal robes unfurl to reveal the long arms and hardware of a strait jacket and a strategic moment.

Koziol’s costumes are worth a mention as they are simultaneously simple and witty in design. I loved that the hems of the robes worn by the various cardinals and archbishops devolved into lace tablecloths or fringed draperies, as if, like Carol Burnett’s Starlett O’Hara, they saw them in the window and just couldn’t resist.

No one is credited with the simple and unobtrusive set, and at the performance I saw I fear that Greg Howe rather mangled Jason Dolmetsch’s lighting design.

The play is performed in three-quarters round, and I chose to sit on the side quite near the back wall of the performing area. If there was ever a play to be viewed sideways, it is Hadrian VII. But I was both pleased and impressed as the evening wore on, to discover that sitting where I did really popped the performance into 3-D, without the need for any silly paper glasses or CGI effects. We so often look at theatre like a flat screen – a necessity in a large, proscenium house – and it takes a skilled director and cast to present a production that can really be enjoyed when viewed from three different directions without getting the slightly dizzying effect of the actors perpetually rotating on their axes, as you do at the Mac-Haydn. I found that I was always seeing faces, not just the backs of heads and ears, and enjoyed the feeling that, from where I was sitting, I was privy to glances and moments that no one else could see – a sense shared by everyone else in the theatre.

My last quibble is Hadden’s decision to perform the play without an intermission. From reading the first half of Double Bill, Alec McCowen’s 1980 biographical account of preparing and performing the lead role in Hadrian VII as well as his acclaimed solo show St. Mark’s Gospel, it is clear that Luke’s script underwent a series of cuts and transformations before emerging in its present form It is also clear that that original staging clearly had an intermission between Luke’s two acts, dividing Rolfe’s life up to his call to “accept pontificality” from his reign as Pope. Here Hadden charges through the whole script in 95 intermission-less minutes. I have to say that I missed that interval. I think it would have engendered a necessary sense of suspense.

Nearly a half-century has elapsed since Luke wrote Hadrian VII. The world has changed. The Catholic Church has changed. It is interesting to look at where things were and where they are and how that change occurred, but I have to ask why, after two thousand plus years of wrong, is the Roman Catholic Church continually surprised and appalled when people criticize it? The complaints haven’t changed very much over the millennia either. It is ironic that one of the major changes Rolfe’s Hadrian suggests – selling off the Vatican treasure – has in fact been implemented, but only because the Church needs the money to pay for the litigation in the multitudinous clergy sex abuse cases it is currently facing…sigh…

When I reviewed Sweet Storm in the Freight Depot Theatre a few weeks ago, I complained about the lack of a path to the theatre from the parking lot, necessitating a lot of slithering over black ice. This time I was pleased to see that a clear path around the ongoing construction had been shoveled, but as we set off down it my companion remarked, “I’m glad I’m with you because I never would have found this place.” Ummmm, that’s not what a theatre hoping to attract an audience wants to hear. Maybe some illuminated signage, not just from the parking lot to the theatre but from East Main Street/ Route 372 as well, would be in order?

The Theatre Company of Hubbard Hall’s production of Hadrian VII runs through March 7 in the Freight Depot Theater, located behind the Hall itself, which is on East Main Street (Rt. 372) in Cambridge, NY. Performances are scheduled at 8 p.m. on February 18 (pay what you will), 19, 20, 26, 27 and March 5 and 6, and February 21 and 28 and March 7 at 2 p.m. The show runs 95 minutes with no intermission and is definitely not for children. Tickets are $18 for TCHH season subscribers, $20 for Hubbard Hall members, $24 for non-members, and $15 for students. Tickets may be reserved and purchased by calling (518) 677-2495.

* The “L” in Rolfe is silent. The name rhymes with “oaf.”

** While the titles of Rolfe’s novel and Luke’s play sound the same when spoken, they are written differently. The novel is “Hadrian the Seventh” while the play is “Hadrian VII.”

*** Rolfe loved to make up big fancy words, so I have invented one of my own in his honor. Defantastification is the act of turning a fantasy story into a dream, a la the 1939 MGM film musical of The Wizard of Oz. In Baum’s original fantasy novel, Dorothy Gale really does go to Oz. In Rolfe’s novel Hadrian the Seventh his protagonist, George Arthur Rose, really does become Pope. Luke has defantastified the story. My point here is that as the 20th century wore on, society as a whole became much more fixated on marking a clear line between “fantasy” and “reality,” as if that were really possible.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hadrian VIII by Peter Luke (1968)

Hadrian the Seventh by Fr. Rolfe (1904)

The Quest for Corvo: Genius or Charlatan? by A. J. A. Symons (1934)

Double Bill by Alec McCowen (1980)