Osborne’s ‘Luther’ Scaled Up

Ours is not a pious age. Yet curiously enough, the modern theater boasts a whole canon of saints, and a full liturgy of plays about them. Each season seems to bring a new saint, a new religious hero: Gideon, Becket, J. B., A Man for All Seasons.

This fall, though, the religious hero is a saint of another’ color. For the play is John Osborne’s Luther, as Tony Richardson and Albert Finney have realized it in the theater. A deathly pale youth, in his monkish black, or an aging Protestant with golden hair flowing to his starched white surplice, this Luther’ has the power to spellbind, to fascinate and to attract.

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Emilie Griffin

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Ours is not a pious age. Yet curiously enough, the modern theater boasts a whole canon of saints, and a full liturgy of plays about them. Each season seems to bring a new saint, a new religious hero: Gideon, Becket, J. B., A Man for All Seasons.

This fall, though, the religious hero is a saint of another’ color. For the play is John Osborne’s Luther, as Tony Richardson and Albert Finney have realized it in the theater. A deathly pale youth, in his monkish black, or an aging Protestant with golden hair flowing to his starched white surplice, this Luther’ has the power to spellbind, to fascinate and to attract.