The Christian Brothers

The Christian Brothers by Ron Blair uses a day in the classroom of one of the Brothers to make comment on the method of education in the 1950s. It’s a bravura piece for a solo actor and needs impeccable timing and crisp delivery to bring off.  Robert Cusenza’s superb diction ensured that not a word was lost.

Often described as a critique of the classroom culture of the day in a Catholic boys’ school, it can go beyond that into the realm of a middle-aged Christian Brother who has many anxieties and significant doubts about his faith and calling as a priest.

The play is full of quips and innuendos which anyone who has experience of trying to control a classroom of boys would recognise. Plenty of humour engages the audience, some, I imagine, recalling their own school days during the years when the play was set and recognising the classroom behaviours and punishments that were meted out.

The teacher’s spiralling wrath is taken out on one hapless (perhaps hopeless) imagined boy represented by a chair.

The first half of the play was played fairly straight. Had the final breakdown of the priest been foreshadowed a little earlier in the piece as the character lost more and more of his self-control, it might have been more powerful. However, when everything clearly started falling apart, Cusenza played his character’s collapse superbly. Whether or not the boy was unconscious wasn’t completely clear, but the Brother’s falling into insanity was obvious.

An excellent play which deserves to be done more often.

Played by Robert Cusenza, Directed by Peter Goers.

At the Arch, Holden Street Theatres until 23^rd March.