Contents
 back to Features |
 previous story
|
next story 
|
Theatre returns to one of its hallowed venues
Writing a play to be performed among the ‘soaring columns’ of Canterbury Cathedral can be daunting, says Gerald Butt
 Drama in the aisles: Mrs Reddan, Dallas Sweetman’s accuser |
|
THE PREMIERE of a historical drama, written by a self-confessed Irish agnostic and staged in Canterbury Cathedral, has revived an artistic tradition that had been dormant for 60 years. Between the late 1920s and the start of the Second World War, the cathedral authorities at Canterbury commissioned some of the best playwrights of the day to write new works specifically for performance within the precincts of the cathedral. The most notable was T. S. Eliot’s verse drama Murder in the Cathedral, about the death of St Thomas Becket, commissioned in 1935 for £100. Canon Edward Condry, the cathedral’s Canon Treasurer, says that today’s revival came about as a result of “a chat” he had four years ago “in the cloisters, after matins” with the then Archdeacon, the Ven. Patrick Evans. “We realised that the whole connection between the cathedral and drama had gone.”Their initial idea, for a playwriting competition, was abandoned when they were advised that they would be inundated with large numbers of what Canon Condry diplomatically refers to as “inappropriate” scripts, with no guarantee that any writing of value would emerge. Instead, he approached Rosie Turner, the director of the Canterbury Festival. Ms Turner, for her part, contacted Paines Plough, a theatre company that specialises in staging original work. |
 Lucinda Lysaght takes revenge on Dallas Sweetman for the wrongs he has inflicted on her |
|
The result was Dallas Sweetman by Sebastian Barry. It had its première in the cathedral last week as part of the Canterbury Arts Festival, and was variously described by theatre critics as “an absolute triumph”, an “unforgettable production”, and “history in the making”.
Mr Barry’s play is the latest product of a unique tradition of ecclesiastical literary sponsorship, which came about in the late 1920s through the efforts of the visionary Canon of Canterbury Cathedral, George Bell. During his time at Canterbury, Canon Bell, who later became Bishop of Chichester, initiated an arts festival in the city. In 1928, he commissioned John Masefield to write a verse drama for performance on the steps of the pulpitum. Masefield’s play The Coming of Christ was the first to be performed in an English cathedral since the Middle Ages.
Masefield’s work, originally only scheduled for two performances, was hugely popular. Despite the challenges posed by the cathedral’s acoustics, which made hearing and understanding the dialogue difficult, an astonishing 6000 people came to Canterbury to see the play.
But approval was not universal. Some members of the church hierarchy, says Canon Condry, doubted whether this was an appropriate way of expressing the Christian faith. “They were not over-delighted. Some members of the chapter were a bit sticky about the idea of drama in the cathedral.” |
 Lucinda and Matthew Lysaght |
|
Despite these initial reservations, the cathedral play became an annual feature of the Canterbury Festival. Dorothy L. Sayers, Lawrence Binyon, and Laurie Lee all took on commissions for verse dramas, with varying degrees of success.
CANTERBURY Cathedral is a daunting and uncompromising space for any playwright to be confronted with — even an accomplished and experienced writer such as Sebastian Barry, whose novel The Secret Scripture is favoured to win this year’s Man Booker Prize. Some of Mr Barry’s predecessors were intimidated and, Canon Condry says, “almost crushed by the weight of expectation of trying to write a play that would fit this enormous, historic, awe-inspiring space”.
Mr Barry, too, confessed that he had been daunted by “the very impropriety of putting a secular play on in such a place of reverberations and silences”. Then there was “the greatness of Murder in the Cathedral, the miracle of its language”, and the “patently colossal literary footprint of T. S. Eliot”.
Nevertheless, Mr Barry’s play engages with its location head-on. Its fictional subject, Dallas Sweetman, a 17th century Irish pilgrim, has been buried in the cathedral, and is summoned from his grave to testify at his posthumous trial. As his story unfolds, the play tackles heavyweight issues such as judgement and forgiveness, memory and identity.
For Roxana Silbert, the artistic director of Paines Plough Theatre Company, it was the poetry and robustness of Mr Barry’s language which made him the obvious choice to fulfil the Canterbury commission. “There are very few dramatists who write like a poet,” Ms Silbert says, “but he is one of them. This space needed that muscularity of language.” |
 Lucius Laysaght and Dallas Sweetman go to the play in London |
|
But ensuring that Mr Barry’s language reached his audience was, Ms Silbert says, “a nightmare”. The problem was only partially overcome by the use of microphones and loudspeakers. The theatre critic of The Times complained last week of “echo and vocal fuzziness”, leaving him with the feeling at times that he was watching “some gorgeous son et lumière”.
Ms Turner hopes the tradition of performing new work in the cathedral will continue. But she concedes that “raising the funds to make it happen will be a challenge.” The transcendent majesty of Canterbury Cathedral does not come cheap. Creating a more intimate space where language can be heard, and where actors are not dwarfed by the soaring columns that surround them, has been an expensive business. Audience seating and the staging (an undulating green surface), along with the complicated sound system, have all had to be specially constructed.
Finances permitting, more new work will follow. But future playwrights will now have to worry about the size not only of Eliot’s footprints, but also those of Mr Barry. He has set the bar high. The Times theatre critic said he had written “an impressively ambitious play that also deals with great questions of faith”. Praise indeed for a self-confessed agnostic. All photos: ALASTAIR MUIR |
