Review of
The Nativity
-
Remotegoat.co.uk
"In the beginning was
the venue, and what a venue. St Paul's Church in Covent Garden is a
spectacular home for this production of The Nativity. Where better to trace
the path of paradise than in a palatial seventeenth century church. Produced
and directed by Daniel Winder and performed by the company of the
Iris Theatre, The Nativity is a
telling of the Old Testament from Genesis through to the birth of Jesus.
Bestriding his scaffolding, dressed in a fluorescent builder's jacket and
wearing a protective helmet,
Matthew Mellalieu
is a commanding, largely benign God. Foreman, handyman and builder, he is
literally building the heavens, earth and humanity. He has the warmth, the
voice and full delivery to immediately draw the audience in. The poetry and
dialect flow convincingly as he booms out the beginnings of all things.
Opposite him, playing with gusto as Lucifer and Herod is
Keith Hill,
revelling in his villainy as he is cast down from the firmament and carted off
in a council waste container, or thrilling towards the throne as a pompous,
paranoid Herod. One of the highlights was Herod's rapport wtih
James Merry
playing his son, the mind and muscle complementing and combining to form a
(supposed) godlike omniscience and might. It's a nice light scene, fun to
watch and it looked like the actors had fun playing it. Playing is one
of the strongest characteristics of The Nativity. The actors are players of
the theatrical tradition we associate with touring players of Shakespeare's
day and before: multi-talented and multi-tasking, poking fun as well as
preening and proclaiming. Mark Starr (Cain, Noah, Abraham and Joseph... among
others) and Kathryn Martin (Mary and Mak's wife) were equally accomplished,
seamlessly switching role and character as the story moved from innocence to
sin to the spark of redemption.
Susan Samuel
gives range to a wonderful, appropriately angelic voice, often singing
unaccompanied, sometimes harmonising with
Annie Walker who
was terrific as Gabriel and one (very French) third of the Three Kings, and
the entire cast. Throughout the performance three musicians (violinist Julia
Lungu, pianist Candida Caldicot-Bull and guitarist / songwriter Theo Bard)
work their live magic, setting up or mirroring mood and bringing Catherine
Kontz's composition to life.
The language is rich, robust and deliberately demotic. Rhyme, assonance and
alliteration abound in
Tony
Harrison's celebration of English (and particularly Northern) society and
the roots upon which it is founded. It's not pretentious, quite the reverse;
from the first words from God we're in textured, terra firma territory. The
angels may be assembled on high as the heavens and earth are born but the
language keeps us firmly on the ground, in the lands and hands of working men
and women.
The construction conceit of God as builder is extended to the set and props
(functional, everyday objects which include scaffolding, bike wheels, torches
and a wheelie bin). The design makes great use of the space and harks back to
earlier, more democratic theatre when the boundary between stage and audience
was less defined. Here we have the actors running, cycling, and being pushed
the length and breadth of the church. And no passive audience this, you might
find yourself being herald to Herod, hurling a wet sponge or bastardising a
barn dance.
One niggle I had was that in certain parts chunks of speech were lost to me,
mainly those delivered by the male cast, which leads me to think it is an
acoustic thing, as the pitch of the women's voices seemed to cope with the
cavernous surroundings, whereas on occasion the men's were swallowed up: you
could hear them, but not distinguish the words. I'm from that part of the
world (Yorkshire, not Bethlehem) and I strained to hear some of it, so it
wasn't the Northern accents.
Coming in just shy of three hours (with a 15 minute interval), it's longer
than most in the audience will be used to and I feel some scenes could have
been trimmed - if I were to pick them out it would be the shepherd and Noah
scenes. If you're telling the story of the Nativity there are elements you
can't miss out - for me, though, shortening some of the sections would have
made the pace that bit better, the whole a little tighter.
But this shouldn't overshadow your enjoyment of The Nativity. And you don't
have to have any religious beliefs - the narrative is familiar to most. There
is singing, there is dancing, there is farce and there is pathos... and was
that nakedness in the House of The Lord... ? (It was quite something to see
the heads creaking left and right, the bums lifting form the seats - all with
the utmost discretion of course - in an effort to establish whether or not
Adam and Eve were actually, totally in the buff.) Were they naked? Go and see
it to find out. But that's not the real reason to see it.Go along and admire
the design, the direction, the wonderfully wrought words and the sheer verve
of the actors. The size and scope of the production admirably match the epic
subject matter and the lofty, expansive surroundings."
Introduction
As a ‘devout’ agnostic, who believes only in the divinity of
uncertainty, I feel am an unusual soul to be leading a company who to have found
a welcoming home the beautiful church that is St. Paul's. This was Iris’ second
show at St Paul’s having done 2 weeks of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral in
March 2007. Christmas eve 2006 I came to St Paul's for midnight mass. It was the
first time in many years. As I absorbed the religious ritual of the service I
was struck by the constant parallels between the world of church and theatre.
Not just in the externals of voice and song, but more fundamentally in the core
belief in the Word as a catalyst for communion. The most moving part was not the
high theatre of the altar, but that moment in the service just before the altar
rail dip when the priest says, ‘And let us how each other a sign of peace’.
Turning to the people around you, friend or stranger, taking their hand you
offer simply ‘peace be with you’. A normal enough moment for church regulars,
but extraordinary for an interloper like myself. There was a true moment of
communion. A rare treasure in our fractured world.
700 years ago Medieval England had an extraordinary tradition
of community theatre based around the stories of the Old and New Testament. The
bible emerged from the confines of the church to be let out onto the streets and
given into the hands of the common man. These myths were re-imagined with wit,
and a touch of mischief, so that the devils, not the angels, were the stars of
the show. The Mysteries were forged by the working men of the City Guilds, the
trade unions of their day. Their task as true craftsmen, their muscular effort,
was the physical construction of community through work. The playing of the
Mysteries was as much a part of their working lives as any other and so these
plays were an irreverent mixture of church and commerce, sanctity and early
adverting.
700 years later Tony Harrison’s earthy poetry rings with the
authentic voice of those working men and women from so long
ago. The text grew out of another community which gathered over the late
Seventies and Eighties at the National Theatre to create this wonderful play. We
were lucky enough to have support from that original cast from Jack Shepherd
(Lucifer, Judas) who gave us all invaluable advice on the robust language.
However, this was not the National Theatre’s production, we had to find our own
way to live the text in our space which is very different from the open
promenade of the Cottesloe. Hopefully we were able to honour that triumphant
production and the theatre community who helped to bring this play to life.
Daniel Winder, Director, December 2007
Tony Harrison
Tony Harrison is Britain’s leading film and
theatre poet. He has written for the National Theatre in London, the New York
Metropolitan Opera and
for the BBC and Channel 4 television. He was born in Leeds, England in 1937 and
was educated at Leeds Grammar School and Leeds University, where he read
Classics and took a diploma in Linguistics. He became the first Northern Arts
Literary Fellow (1967-8), a post that he held again in 1976-7, and he was
resident dramatist at the
National Theatre
(1977-8). His work there included adaptations of Molière’s The Misanthrope and
Racine’s Phaedra Britannica. His first collection of poems, The Loiners (1970),
was awarded the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1972, and his acclaimed version
of Aeschylus’s The Oresteia (1981) won him the first European Poetry Translation
Prize in 1983. The The Gaze of the Gorgon (1992) won the Whitbread Poetry Award.
His adaptation of the English Medieval Mystery Plays cycle was first performed
at the National Theatre in 1985. Many of his plays have been staged away from
conventional auditoria: The Trackers of Oxyrhyncus was premièred at the ancient
stadium at Delphi in 1988; Poetry or Bust was first performed at Salts Mill,
Saltaire in Yorkshire in 1993; The Kaisers of Carnuntum premiered at the ancient
Roman amphitheatre at Carnuntum in Austria; and The Labours of Herakles was
performed on the site of the new theatre at Delphi in Greece in 1995. His
translation of Victor Hugo’s The Prince’s Play was performed at the National
Theatre in 1996. His films using verse narrative include V, about vandalism,
broadcast by Channel 4 television in 1987 and winner of a Royal Television
Society Award; Black Daisies for the Bride, winner of the Prix Italia in 1994;
and The Blasphemers’ Banquet, screened by the BBC in 1989, an attack on
censorship inspired by the Salman Rushdie affair. He co-directed A Maybe Day in
Kazakhstan for Channel 4 in 1994 and directed, wrote and narrated The Shadow of
Hiroshima, screened by Channel 4 in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the dropping
of the first atom bomb. The published text, The Shadow of Hiroshima and Other
Film/Poems (1995), won the Heinemann Award in 1996. He wrote and directed his
first feature film Prometheus in 1998. In 1995 he was commissioned by The
Guardian newspaper to visit Bosnia and write poems about the war.
His most recent
collection of poetry is Under the Clock (2005). His Collected Poems, and
Collected Film Poetry, were published in 2007. Tony Harrison lives in Newcastle
upon Tyne.
Cast
God, 1st King, 1st Shepherd: -
Matthew Mellalieu
Lucifer, Satan, Herod, Mak: -
Keith Hill
Cain, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, 2nd King, 2nd Shepherd: -
Mark Starr
Adam, Abel, Herod’s Son, 3rd Shepherd:
James Merry
Gabriel, Noah’s Wife, 3rd King:
Annie Walker
Eve, Issac, Herod’s Messenger:
Susan Samuel
Mary, Mak’s Wife:
Kathryn
Martin
Cast Pictures
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Matthew Mellalieu |
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Keith Hill |
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Mark Starr |
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Susan Samuel |
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Kathryn Martin |
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Annie Walker |
Music
MD / Piano / Percussion:
Candida Caldicot-Bull
Guitar and Song Writer:
Theo Bard
Composer:
Catherine Kontz
Violin:
Julia Lungu
Crew
Producer/Director:
Daniel Winder
Executive Producers: Nigel Winder,
Frankie Cosgrave
Production Partner:
St Pauls, Covent Garden
Production (St Pauls):
Charles Grant
Assistant Producer:
Chrissy Jay
Lighting Designer:
Benjamin Polya
Design Team: Alica Farrow, Katherine Webb,
Sean Turner
Costume Making:
Lauren McCarthy
Prop Making: Fiona Ng, Zarah Snowman, Liane Sparks,
Carol Mandeville, Amiee Sibun
Choreography:
Lisa Lee
