"Mass Appeal" presented by Circle Theatre

MASS APPEAL
play program

The Travelling Toe and a friend attended a Saturday afternoon production of "Mass Appeal" at the Circle Theatre in downtown Fort Worth. The play was written by Bill C Davis.


Circle Theatre

Bill C Davis

Bill C Davis


The comedy-drama is a 2 character play.   It centers on the conflict between a popular parish priest and a young idealist seminarian.

The young priest-to-be Mark Dolson, has a hard time relating to people, plus he sees the world only in right verses wrong with no shade of grey involved.   The parish priest, Tim Farley, sees the world in various shades of grey and dishes out tired and true tag lines to comfort or counsel his parishioners.  Father Tim also has a liking for good wines and other types of alcoholic spirits and has a standing appointment each Monday to go to the racetrack. 

Mark is struggling with the hierarchy of the church seminary and its handling of some major issues involving other seminarians.  Father Tim tries to help Mark without getting himself in hot water with the Monsignor.  He makes a joke that his next parish will be in a corn field in Iowa if he can not convince the Monsignor that Mark has good intentions and just needs more time to mature in his faith and his views of the world. 

We both thought the play was very funny and very emotional as it touched on issues facing the Catholic Church, as well as other church denominations,  even in today's more tolerant atmosphere.

Jakie Cabe, who The Travelling Toe has seen in several productions at the Circle Theatre, as well as a few  other local theater groups, played Father Tim Farley and was excellent.  He was spot-on as the wise cracking parish priest who just could not give up his comforts to defend Mark.

Mark Dolson was played by Justin Lemieux.  As a young man himself,  he played the role really well as you could see him struggling with maintaining and defending his ideals as he could see his dream of becoming a priest slip away.

It is always interesting to see how a play will be staged at Circle Theatre, as there are 3 sides for audience members so the theater must make good use of  the back wall and even parts of the stage area itself.   For this play, the stage setting was very well done and imaginative..

All in all it was an excellent production and an enjoyable afternoon at the theater.

This might be hard to read but it is the bio's of the two actors in the play.

One final note, during the play the plot seemed somewhat familiar.  So The Travelling Toe did a spot of research and found out that the play had been made into a movie in 1984 and starred Jack Lemon as Father Tim and Zeljko Ivanek as Mark Dolson.

Disclaimer:  The Travelling Toe is not a professional critic and any opinions expressed are for entertainment purposes only.