Following the success of The Two Popes, Anthony McCarten’s latest work pairs two unlikely Catholics from the New York art scene of the 1980s.

Anthony McCarten made a big impact with a biographical drama about an unusual Vatican overlap: The Two Popes, the 2019 movie with an Oscar-nominated screenplay adapted by McCarten from his stage play The Pope. It imagined a conversation in which Benedict XVI (played by Anthony Hopkins), planning to retire from the papacy, seeks to dissuade Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio (played by Jonathan Pryce) from his intention to resign as Archbishop of Buenos Aires, with the clear implication that the German seeks the Argentinian as his successor.

Last week, the Young Vic Theatre in London premiered McCarten’s new play, The Collaboration, which he tantalisingly pos­itioned in publicity as a sort of successor to The Two Popes, and further identified as the second part of a projected “Worship Trilogy”.

McCarten, a New Zealander, was brought up Catholic. He lost his faith, though clearly not his interest in it. The Collaboration, while tonally very different from the papal play, again features two baptised Catholics – the American artists Andy Warhol (1928-1987) and Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988).