Murder in the Cathedral - March 2007

Reviews

" TS Eliot-related theatre usually involves fake fur and Andrew Lloyd Webber. Thankfully there's not a whisker in sight in Iris Theatre's new production of Eliot's little-known verse play Murder in the Cathedral. Staged in Inigo Jones' dramatic St Paul's Church, the play charts the last days of Archbishop Thomas Becket before his assassination in 1170. The play's themes are Old Testament-worthy (power and politics, the age-old battle of church and state, temptation and resolve, martyrdom and sacrifice), but with a brand-new choral score and Eliot's lively verse, it's as vital and relevant as anything in the West End — including felines. " - C.A. (flavorpill.net)

"....The production of a master’s work, T.S. Eliot’s mystical 'Murder in the Cathedral', by a truly talented handful of actors of the Iris Theatre, had little to envy of its premier performance in Canterbury Cathedral back in 1935. St. Paul of Covent Garden, known as the ‘actors church’, provided a fitting setting for the plot of Thomas Becket’s murder by four knights of King Henry II.

The actors veered from actual post to pillar dramatising the agony of the saintly archbishop coming to terms with his fate, while the choir and women housekeepers paid testament to the dramatic events like a chorus would in ancient Greek tragedy. The audience was magnetised by the flowing course of roaming actors surrounding them, echoing their part in excellent verse while the choir and organ imparted scenes with revering undertones...." - Manos Hatzimalonas (Greek National Tourism Organisation)

 

Introduction

Murder in the Cathedral is often played as if it were a dry theological debate. This, in my view, is a mistake. To interpret Eliot’s work as a measured deliberation on the role of church and state is to ignore the blood, pain, fear and anguish, and ultimately the redemptive triumph of the soul that is at the visceral heart of the play.
        I fell in love with this play in Australia on a self-imposed exile between a PhD in theoretical physics and three years at Drama Centre. Eliot’s resurrection as a voice in the theatrical genre is long overdue and his work vastly underrated. Eliot makes verse connect with human flesh – his plays are not poetic recitals, they need a physical expression and interpretation.
        Balance is integral to my vision of the play; the cool theology is there, yes, but ultimately it is a character portrayal, a journey, one man’s struggle with himself. Thomas triumphs not with his intellect but his heart and soul. There is no purely intellectual route out of the hell that he finds himself in; Thomas finds the route out of his own mental struggle through grace, the unearned gift from God. In the great tradition of medieval martyrs and mysticism Thomas’ final victory arises through accepting his own doubt, and thereby finding a path to God through the ‘cloud of unknowing’.
        Murder in the Cathedral addresses questions that have real resonance in today’s society. What does it mean to be a martyr? What is a good death and how far should we have jurisdiction over our own ends? How can we justify murder in someone else’s name?
        The women of the play (who themselves describe their role as to wait) are more than commentators and observers; they represent the ongoing mystery of physical resurrection, through pregnancy and childbirth. They balance the monotheistic concept of masculine control over life and death through spiritual resurrection with the physical resurrection through the pain and blood of childbirth. By their very existence, by their proactive continuation of ordinary life and the perpetuation of the cyclical rhythm of the year they provide the ordinary context for extraordinary events.
        The play isn’t a naturalistic piece, it is not interested in historical fact but in emotional truth, it combines the spiritual with the everyday and makes each a part of the other.
        It is easy to lose sight of the fact that Thomas Becket lived, was a real man, not a literary, metaphorical creation. On the first day of rehearsals we discovered Thomas’ name, first on the list of rectors at St Mary at Hill.

 
Daniel Winder, Director, March 2007
 

T. S. Eliot 1888 - 1965

Born in Missouri in 1888 Eliot was the last of six surviving children. He studied at Milton Academy and Harvard, where some of his early poems were published in the Harvard Advocate, at the Sorbonne and a year on a scholarship at Merton College, Oxford. In the summer of 1915 he married Vivienne Haigh-Wood. He started teaching in London (at Highgate where he taught the young John Betjeman and later at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe) working on his dissertation at the same time. He also wrote book reviews and lectured at evening extension courses. In 1917 he took a position in foreign accounts at Lloyds Bank and in 1925 became a director of Faber and Gwyer (later Faber and Faber).
        1927 was a pivotal year for Eliot; he converted to Anglicanism and became a British subject. It was also the year in which he wrote Ash Wednesday, published in 1930, dealing as Cathedral does with the struggle between spiritual barrenness and the hope of salvation. In 1932 he was offered the Charles Eliot Norton professorship at Harvard and he left Vivien in England, officially separating from her when he returned in 1933. Vivien Eliot died in Northumberland House, a mental hospital in North London in 1947.
        Eliot’s first collection of poems was Prufrock and Other Observations (1917). In 1920 Eliot published more poems in Ara Vos Prec and Poems: 1920. In October 1922, Eliot published The Waste Land in The Criterion.
        In 1925 he collected this and other poems into one volume with The Hollow Men to form Poems: 1909–1925.
        From then on he updated this work (as Collected Poems) with the exception of the children’s collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats (1939), Poems Written in Early Youth was posthumously published in 1967 and Inventions of the March Hare: Poems 1909–1917 was posthumously published in 1997.
        The four poems of Four Quartets were published separately from 1936 to 1942 and resulted in his receipt of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1948.
        After Four Quartets Eliot wrote mostly plays; Murder in the Cathedral for the Canterbury Festival (1935) was followed by The Family Reunion (1939), The Cocktail Party (1949), The Confidential Clerk (1953) and The Elder Statesman (1958).
        From 1946 to 1957, Eliot shared a flat with his friend, John Davy Hayward, who gathered and archived Eliot’s papers which he bequeathed to King’s College Cambridge in 1965. On January 10, 1957, Eliot married Esmé Valerie Fletcher , 38 years his junior, who had been his secretary at Faber and Faber since August 1949.
        Eliot died of emphysema in London on January 4, 1965. His body was cremated and the ashes taken to St Michael’s Church in East Coker, the village from which Eliot’s ancestors emigrated to America. Two years after his death a large stone dedicated to Eliot was laid in Poets’ Corner, Westminster Abbey.

Cast

Women of Canterbury: The Housekeeper - Constance Dalrymple

                                             The Mother Figure - Alison Mead

                                             The Pregnant Girl - Chrissy Gallon

1st Priest - Martin Richie

2nd Priest - Michael Twaits

3rd Priest - Francis J Exell

Thomas Becket - Tom Durham

1st Tempter & Messenger - Fiona Watson

1st Knight - Marcus McSorley

2nd Tempter & 2nd Knight - Tom Hunter

3rd Tempter & 3rd Knight - Connor Williams

4th Tempter - Michael Sadler

4th Knight - Jack Merivale

Voice of Saints Day 1 - David Angus

Voice of Saints Day 2 - Alinka Wright

Women of Canterbury - Melinda Gidaly Mayor, Alexandra Holmes, Annekoos Arlman, LIsa Klevemark, Ruth Morris, Sue Whyte, Liv Spencer

Singers - Camille Maalawy, Sophie Meikle, Yukako Nishide, Jo Webber, Carmen Vass, Lisa Turner

Organists - Robert Smith, Colin Grey, Tim Kwan

Cast Pictures

Constance Dalrymple		Alison Mead		Chrissy Gallon
Martin Richie		Michael Twaits		Francis J Exell
Tom Durham		Fiona Watson		Marcus McSorley
Tom Hunter		Connor Williams		Michael Sadler
		Jack Merivale

Production Team

Executive Producer - Nigel Winder

Director/Producer - Dr. Daniel Winder

Musical Director and Composer - John White

Assistant Director - Kierrie Wratten

Movement Director - Tim Klotz

Mask Director - Margaret Caldiron

Assistant Producer  - Ruth Brock

2nd Assistant Producer - Emma Hair

Musical Producer - Lisa Turner

Lighting Designer - Ben Polya

Theatre Designer - Laura Shimmen

Design Assistant - Loretta Lipworth

New Media Public Artist (Projected Video Art) - Eileen Botsford

Projections Assistant - Tanita Ojo-Baptiste

Stage Manager - Heather Rose

Flyer & Poster Design - Peter Clasby

Venue Manager (St Pauls) - Charles Grant

Credits

With sincere and grateful thanks to Robert Smith (Admin, St Marys at Hill), Graham Mundy
(Churchwarden St Marys at Hill), Rev’d Simon Grigg (St Paul’s), June Boden-Tebbutt (Churchwarden, St Paul’s), Robert Keen (Caretaker, St Paul’s), The Mercers’ Company, Frankie Cosgrave, Di Trevis, Slideshow Ltd, White Light Ltd, Steve Burson, Mary Gifford Brown, Jim Rosenthal.