June 15, 2002

Malachy McCourt stars in "Mass Appeal"

At a friend's request, the pastor let Wiles spend time on the altar to help him get inside the mind of Mark Dolson, the young seminarian Wiles will play when "Mass Appeal" opens at the Cape Playhouse next week.

"Mass Appeal" stars Wiles, 32, in his first major stage play and veteran actor Malachy McCourt, 70, reprising his role as longtime parish priest Father Tim Farley. Dolson, who has come to train with Farley, criticizes the older priest for saying anything to make himself popular and for living on the fine wines his congregants provide. But Dolson has issues of his own, having explored his bisexuality and dishonesty in "a three-year orgy" before deciding to become a priest. There is passing mention of gay sex between two adult seminarians.

The play has been produced scores of times around the world since Bill C. Davis wrote it in 1981. In 1984, it was made into a movie starring Jack Lemmon as Farley with Zeljko Ivanek as Dolson.

But this is the first time "Mass Appeal" has been staged in a world reeling from Sept. 11 and charges of priests molesting children.

"About eight years ago, a priest who had been at my school and in my parish in Kansas went to prison for 40 years for molesting children over a 20-year period," Wiles said. "In sixth, seventh grade, we were told to look up to these people, and that's what's scary. I never thought the church was going to be this exposed. One falls, and they all fall."

Congregants here in eastern Massachusetts have been picketing for the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law over allegations that he knowingly transferred pedophilic priests to unsuspecting parishes.

"In a way, we're sort of in the eye of the storm, doing the play in that area," Davis, 50, said of the Cape production of "Mass Appeal."

Jason Wiles stars in "Mass Appeal"

But he left the guts of the play untouched. The issues he raised back in 1981 - women as priests, materialism vs. spirituality, loneliness and chastity in the clergy, friendship and love - are all as relevant today, he said, as they were then.

It's those issues that led Wiles to St. Paul's last Sunday. The actor stood there in the pulpit of the church on 89th Street in New York City. He thought about how Mark would feel in the moments before his first sermon. He thought about why people come to church and what faith means in a troubled world.

"It's both scary and so interesting to me, because I've been away from the church for 10 years," said Wiles, who grew up in Catholic school with daily Mass. "It's scary emotionally as an actor to explore my past, to explore what my beliefs are ... to think about whether I can be true to my faith despite what's going on in the church."

"Thank God for the '60s and'70s, so you can ask questions and challenge things and come back into whatever system you're in as a full participating member," Davis said. "We have to be allowed to help shape the thing that has shaped us." "Mass Appeal" opens with Dolson questioning Farley about whether he thinks women should become priests. Afraid congregants won't like him if he expresses controversial opinions, Farley dodges the question. The next 59 pages of dialogue are a tug-of-war in which Farley and Dolson explore their common and uncommon ground.

The list of actors who have done the play reads like a who's who of the accomplished and upcoming: Milo O'Shea, Brian Keith, Eric Roberts, Michael O'Keefe, Tim Daly, Charles Durning, John Travolta, Jean Piat (in France) and Rupert Everett (in England). Davis himself has played Dolson.

"I think it should change with each actor," Davis said of his play. "The personality of people coming into the part give it a particular shading; some actors bring a certain wit for Father Farley; others a certain sadness. Mark can have a certain insouciance; can be abrasive; or feeling confused. Everybody arrives with a certain personality."

Having played Farley in a 1986 production Davis directed at the Irish Arts Center, McCourt said his performance will be less glib this time.

"I am certainly looking at it more deeply," he said in a telephone interview from his New York City home. "The couple of times I did it before, it was sort of lighthearted in a way, but in another way there was the underlying sadness of this man, and his loneliness, and his alcoholism and the life of celibacy that's imposed by the church."

Both McCourt and Davis say the Catholic church should make provisions allowing priests to marry if they want to. Davis says he abhors any child abuse that happened in the church, but worries that good priests will be hurt as a result of the controversy and that the church's mission for peace is being derailed.

Davis said it's time to address the repression priests live with and for the hierarchy to support the people who they send out to save the rest of the world.

"Priests need to be human," he said. "They're out there every day and what they deal with in a day - death, divorce, abortion - is overwhelming. And then they don't go home to a wife and family, they go home to an empty house."

"Doing 'Mass Appeal' now, when so much has been revealed about the molestation of children, and having been a victim of that myself when I was a kid in Ireland, a couple of times by priests and once by a prominent layman ... gave me a sort of jaundiced view of the church," McCourt said.

But, he added said, the Catholic Church is really just the institutional background for the relationship between Farley and Dolson. "It could be Tip O'Neill and a young Kennedy, it could be politics or business."

He only goes to church for weddings and funerals, McCourt said, but he tries to lead a life of spirituality and forgiveness. "Not forgiving is like handing your enemy a knife and telling him to stab you over and over again," he said.

"You can go over the top and start falling over things because many people think it's about losing control. But when you're drinking, it's really about trying to keep control and making small mistakes that give you away."

McCourt said one of the best parts of the New York rehearsals for "Mass Appeal" was watching Wiles transform himself into Dolson. Wiles wanted to be interviewed for this story on Sunday, a day off, because he didn't feel he could be Dolson all day and then give his all to doing an interview as himself.

Having wanted to do stage work for a long time, Wiles was attracted to "Mass Appeal" by Dolson's character and by the two-week run. He didn't want to be away too long from Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife, agent Joanne Roberts Wiles, and 11-month-old daughter Georgia Blue. In fact, Wiles will spend his first Father's Day on stage at the Cape Playhouse, previewing the show as his family watches.

And then, there was the omen.

Coming home late from rehearsal one night, Wiles and a friend got on an empty New York subway car. A short while later, a man in his 40s got on the other end and started reading a newspaper.

"My friend said, 'That's Mark Dolson!' and I thought he meant it was a perfect Mark Dolson type," Wiles said. "But it was Zeljko (Ivanek) who played Dolson in the movie. It was strange. Of all things, why did that happen?

"That kind of thing makes me realize I'm in the right place, being in this play and exploring me, Jason Wiles, and my spirituality."