The Mysteries The Nativity

In November 2007 Iris theatre presented the first part of Tony Harrison’s Modern Mystery Cycle : The Nativity.

With the World Premiere of new music by Theo Bard and Catherine Kontz.

"biblical beginnings hit the heights" - Remotegoat.co.uk

Performance Pictures
By Ben Polya



Show Shots taken by Pascal Ancel

Candida Caldicot-Bull

Alica Farrow, Katherine Webb, Sean Turner

Fiona Ng, Zarah Snowman, Liane Sparks, Carol Mandeville, Amiee Sibun

Cast Pictures
	Matthew Mellalieu

James Merry	Keith Hill	Mark Starr

Susan Samuel	Kathryn Martin	Annie Walker

Audiences

Through the two weeks of ten performances over 400 people shaw the show. On Tues 13th Nov we had a gala opening where we were honoured with the presence of the Right Rev. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury; Tony Harrison, writer; Bob Crowley, Director and Designer, National Theatre; Sian Thomas, Actress and many others. The Archbishop returned on an unofficial visit on 24th Nov (our last night) to see the show with his son Pip.

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.

"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."