Antonio Banderas Recalls Staging GODSPELL for Pope Leo XIV: 'I Felt the Spell of God'

Antonio Banderas has pulled back the curtain on one of the more improbable theatrical bookings of the year: a performance of GODSPELL for Pope Leo XIV.

In a wide-ranging interview with Helen Rosner for The New Yorker, the Tony nominee walked through how his Spanish-language production of the Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak musical ended up in front of the Pope.

Banderas directed GODSPELL for his Teatro del Soho CaixaBank in Málaga, in a staging that relocates the show to a bombed-out church in the middle of a war. "The show starts with bombing in the background, kaboom, and a discussion among them about what to do," he told The New Yorker. "Jesus comes out, and he says 'I'm an actor, too.'" Every time the character has to deliver a line of scripture, Banderas said, he approaches it as an actor grasping for a cue - "just remembering his lines and then saying the line. So the audience is all the time in and out, unsure what is performance." The second act drops the device: "The troupe are now doing the show; now they believe who they are."

The first clerical endorsement came in Málaga. "The Bishop of Málaga came to see the show, and after he said, 'I am tempted to say that what I saw was heretical, so that many people will come to see it,'" Banderas recalled. "I said, 'What do you mean by that?' He said, 'That I loved it. Can I go again?'"

The production transferred to Madrid's Gran Teatro Pavón in January, where the Cardinal of Madrid caught it - and asked Banderas for a medley for the Pope, plus remarks of his own. The GODSPELL company performed at the youth vigil during Leo XIV's June visit to Spain, with Banderas addressing a crowd of 12,000 the following day.

"He said, 'I loved what you guys did yesterday. I know very well that play, because I am American,'" Banderas said of the Pope. His own remarks closed like this: "Holy Father, I'm here because of 'Godspell,' and 'Godspell' in Spanish is encanto de dios, the God spell. And I have to confess that I am here today because I felt the spell of God."

Not everyone was on board. "The day of that performance in front of the Pope, there were people that opposed it," he said. "The Church has many different factions, and God is a subject that people try to kidnap, to reduce to something for themselves."

Banderas, who was Tony-nominated for NINE in 2003, also revisited a conversation with Stephen Sondheim that began in his Broadway dressing room and stretched until the theater nearly closed for the night. "He said, 'When you direct one of my shows, look under the stones,'" Banderas remembered thinking it an odd thing to tell a performer with no directing plans.

Years later, staging COMPANY in Málaga with a 50-year-old Bobby and a restructured, cinematic frame, he got a letter from Sondheim: "You can change the age of the characters. You can change this and that, and this and that. But don't change the structure. And remember what I said to you: look under the stones."

Because the changes were substantial, American lawyers flew in to vet the production. They approved it and asked for a video so Sondheim could watch - it was COVID, and the 91-year-old composer wasn't flying. "And the next day, he died, so he never saw it," Banderas said. "The movie of life always finishes the same way."

Up next at Teatro del Soho: SWEENEY TODD, which Banderas is set to direct and star in. He's keeping the concept close to the vest - "I'm going to do it in a very specific way that I should be cautious to talk about, but it's going to be very spectacular."

Photo: Elena Campo

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