'Brothers' in Christ: Bruce Myers on 'The Grand Inquisitor'

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ENGLISH-BORN ACTOR and director Bruce Myers comes to Washington, D.C., to play a Spaniard by way of a Russian author this weekend with Clarice Smith Center's sold-out three-night run of "The Grand Inquisitor."

Famed avant-garde director Peter Brook helmed the one-man show, adapted from a lengthy passage in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamozov." Myers glowers, cajoles, confronts and philosophizes as the title character, who's facing a returned Jesus Christ, now working miracles and affirming people's faith amid the agony and tumult of the Spanish Inquisition. Hoping to condemn Christ for heresy, the inquisitor instead discovers something — as do modern audiences — about freedom, faith and the uses of power.

» EXPRESS: How did Brook find an arc in what is essentially a parable?
» MYERS: It exists entirely independent of the larger work — of "The Brothers Karamazov" and also of Dostoyevsky's whole work, in a certain way. Although he gives a character to tell the story to, it's hardly a parable, because it's extremely detailed in the strange humanity of the relationship that the inquisitor has with Christ.

» EXPRESS: Did you work with Brook on the adaptation?
» MYERS: Yes, I did. We developed it together. ... The last advice he gave me — because I play it in different ways — is to say, "[The inquisitor is] not naive, he's definitely not naive." It means that his emotions are conscious. In the end, he thinks he's like a superman, I suppose; he's got the power of life and death. That's his daytime job.

» EXPRESS: He puts himself in the Christ role, right in front of Christ.
» MYERS: I think he does put himself against Christ in that way. ... He talks all the time about the church and he talks about himself as the church — he goes through one century to another, he goes through 15 centuries, as if he's there, which, of course, he is not. But Christ was there.

» EXPRESS: Are you playing the role differently for a savvy and political D.C. audience?
» MYERS: No, I play it differently because there are many different elements in it. One day in Mexico, they roared in laughter, astonishingly. It was nice at the beginning, but by the end of it, I thought it was strange. I think now they were probably grateful for the chance, through the play they were watching, to say something in anger, in frustration, to the Lord, to God. The church is very strong in Mexico; it must have been a release. ... I took advantage of it, of course.

» EXPRESS: It's hard for people who are frustrated with the church to express it or reconcile themselves. As a strong Catholic, it must have broken Dostoyevsky's heart that the Inquisition ever happened.
» MYERS: I know. I mean, he managed to roughly justify it because he was a Russian Orthodox, so he wasn't condemning his own church.

» EXPRESS: So, is it just you onstage, talking to no one?
» MYERS: Christ is there. Christ is present, looking with love, eternal love. It is me talking, though. It's a great text, one of Dostoyevsky's most powerful texts. Christ can't possibly answer — that's the whole wonderful idea at the beginning. The inquisitor asks at the beginning, "Is it really you?" and then he says very cleverly says, "All right, don't speak. I'll speak."

» EXPRESS: How do you find the ambiguity in a character who's grilling the son of God?
» MYERS: He's not grilling him, he's setting him up to condemn him as a heretic. ... In essence, he challenges Christ with the question, "Why have you come to disturb us?" Because Christ has been doing miracles in the street during the time of the Inquisition.

» EXPRESS: How was it received in Damascus?
» MYERS: They were very interested in it. At the same time, they were many people who said, "Oh, it's not really our religion," which is true — it's not their religion, it's Catholicism. But at the same time, I think they understood very well what it was all about. They understand very well what a tyrant is, they understand very well what autocratic rule is. There was a great ambiguity in their actions, and it spoke a lot to the young people.

» EXPRESS: What will people take away from this?
» MYERS: I think it is very much to listen to and decide who's right, as [the inquisitor] says, "Who's right? You? Or he who questioned you?" And at that moment he's talking about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness by Satan. He clearly thinks that Satan was right, and there's an interesting thought, in the end — there's a connection between the two of them. And I think that's a very important theme, not to be afraid of evil, of the antichrist. It's a more sensitive way of looking at the world.

» EXPRESS: A more vulnerable one as well.
» MYERS: Yes, it makes us something human.

» Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, Route 193 & Stadium Boulevard, College Park; Thu. & Fri., 8 p.m., sold out; 301-405-2787.

Photo by Tristram Kenton