Volume 25, Number 17 · November 9, 1978
St. Mark on Broadway
By Frank Kermode
St. Mark's Gospel
a solo performance by Alec McCowen
Alec McCowen has been doing his already celebrated one-man show, a performance of St. Mark's Gospel, at the Marymount Manhattan Theater on East 71st Street. It is reopening for a three-week run at the Playhouse Theater on West 48th Street in New York on October 24. Mark's is the shortest of the Gospels, and perhaps the only one that could be done in this way; it runs for over two hours, which is certainly enough for the actor, if not for the audience. The idea is full of interest, for the Gospels form a special class of narrative and are usually read silently or heard as part of the liturgy (in which, incidentally, Mark makes few appearances). We hardly think of them as stories, or of their alterations of voice and mood. McCowen compels us to do so. He is a player of dazzling accomplishment, and the first half of the show was a performance of such virtuosity as to seem pretty well beyond criticism.
Review, 1339 words
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