P.S.
Mystery Play
Forget the whizzbangery and 3D special effects of 21st century movies, where we sit in comfy seats mesmerised by the lights and animations and can completely miss the plot – assuming there is one, of course.
When it comes to a fresh re-telling of a 2000 year-old story look no further than a production of a 600 year-old medieval mystery play.
I am not kidding.
In the Middle Ages literacy was the privilege of the church and royalty. Simple folk depended on readings by the priests and the Mystery Play was the medium for the masses.
Whole towns would work together for an annual presentation of their local play, with enormous social benefits for the whole community. And these were not brief three-hour affairs either: starting before dawn they would often not conclude until midnight.
Elaborate wooden carts with trapdoors and several levels were built by different Guilds in each town as their contribution to the performance.
A last minute decision recently took me to All Saints in South Hobart for a production of The Mystery Plays, directed by well-known director and actor Robert Jarman.
This production adapted the work of two particular authors of the English Cycles – the Wakefield Master and the York Realist. Their personal names remain unknown, but without their work there might not have been a Shakespeare.
A simple wooden platform was installed at the front of the church, the cast wore Yakka-style overalls and played multiple roles.A choir sat at both sides of the platform and props and lighting were minimal.
The text was the thing.
The play commenced with the expulsion of Lucifer from Heaven. Then followed the Creation of Adam and Eve.
Noah was there with his family and an ark made of umbrellas – the rainbow umbrella was brilliant – and highlights of the Old and then the New Testament followed in more or less chronological order, right to the Resurrection and the Second Coming.
The language was earthy, ribald, with a lively humour. The fervent Marianism and racism can be unsettling to some 21st century sensibilities, and there’s a few theological wobbles, but the power of God’s story and his intense love for us human creatures shone through it all.
We know the story, we know it so well, but this play revealed so many new facets.
One of the most striking for me was the emphasis on ‘choice’: Lucifer could choose to obey God. Adam and Eve had to choose. Abraham, Joseph, Pilate – there was always a choice.
And throughout was the constant presence of Lucifer. The orange-clad figure with the enormous black-feathered wings smirked and wheedled and strode about in the Garden of Eden; at Abraham’s offering of his son; at the last supper; in the Garden of Gethsemane and in Purgatory with the souls waiting for Christ to release them.
This was no sanitised gospel story. No political correctness here and the power of the Greatest Story was breathtakingly evident. If you get the opportunity to see such a performance, take it!
Sheelagh Wegman