THE Steward Of Christendom opened last week at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York to almost universal acclaim, writes Helena Malkerns. Ben Brantley's review in The New York Times refers to Sebastian Barry's play as a "magnificent portrait of a life recollected", and then examines the varied and many layers within the work. "The extraordinary accomplishment of this production ... is its ability to keep all of these levels in play without floating into abstraction," he continues, concluding that "you leave the theatre with both sadness and a glow of gratitude for a play and a performance that have bestowed the illumination of more than a little clarity and grace".

This aspect of the play was commented on too, by Clive Barnes of the New York Post. "When a staging and a performance come together in such perfect accord ... the moment becomes luminous, lighting the spirit with its grace."

Only the Daily News critic Howard Kissel dissented in his views, claiming that "the play does not coalesce. it seems more like a collection of stories"; he added, however, that "when Mc Cann is telling them, they are spell binding".