Death Comes for the Archbishop
Am curled up with cup of cocoa and choccie biscuits trying to warm up after a freezing cycle ride home: Resident Geek and I just got back from seeing T.S. Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral ... in the Cathedral! (Christchurch, Oxford to be precise).
... well, a bit of a curate's egg, actually. I was under the impression before we went that it was an OUDS (student) production, and had it been an all-student effort it would have been a very good one; but checking just now, it was professionally directed, which makes me feel a bit sterner towards some of the flaws.
(Though admittedly, some of the things that didn't work for me are I suspect inherent in the material rather than the production's fault; I muttered at the end into the Resident Geek's ear something along the lines of having just demonstrated that TSE was a better poet than a dramatist, at which point RG retorted that what on earth had made me think it was a drama?)
The Cathedral was obviously a gorgeously appropriate setting - dark, candle-lit, incense-scented - but actually brought its own problems, particularly in the second half. The first half was all played in the central crossing, under the tower, which created an intimate, in-the-round feel which worked very well; the young actor playing Becket was fantastically cast, tall and rangy and ascetic-looking, all Norman pride and burning intensity, and the scenes where he is confronted by his successive Tempters were highly charged and very effective. The Chorus worked well in the first half too; much of the chorus work (they're the women of Canterbury, though obviously heavily indebted to the idea of a classical Greek chorus) was sung, beautifully set in a style reminiscent of Gregorian chant, and while there were a few weaker voices there were some very fine singers who carried the rest easily enough.
For Act Two most of us had to move seats, so that we were strung out up and down the nave - RG and I chose to sit fairly well up in the canons' stalls, because clearly the denouement was going to occur before the High Altar; but with hindsight we should have stayed as close to the centre as we could. Using the whole of the nave space was an ambitious decision and it was a brave attempt, but it presented some fairly major technical problems: the unison chorus work fell apart (not entirely the fault of the cast, because with a nave the length of CCh's, and all the echo and timelag, it's just not possible to keep people at the two ends of the nave sounding in unison wherever the listener is); and the actors clearly felt that at all times they must be audible to people at both ends of the Cathedral, which resulted in the entire second act being rather one-note, and that note being SHOUTY. Now I can quite see, even without having previously read the play, that by its nature much of Act Two is declamatory; but the need to physically SHOUT removed any possibility of variation in tone, or of the moments of intimacy which had made the first half so powerful
[ETA: I chatted this morning to a friend who sings at Christchurch and also went to last night's performance, and who agreed with me on the undesirability of trying to split the cast along the length of the nave in the second act. She said that apparently during the first few nights of the run they were performing the second act in a much tighter space largely before the high altar - but that had caused problems in that not all the audience could see properly; it simply isn't possible to cram everyone into the canons' stalls which are about the only place from which you could see that space clearly. We agreed that a better solution would have been to try to be more creative with the seating...]
So I found it, dramatically, rather unsatisfying in the end which was a shame; partly I suspect unevenness of tone of the original play (which doesn't seem quite able to decide if it's a mystery play, or (at brief moments in the first half) a character drama, or a modern courtroom drama, or a poem, and veers uneasily between all of these), and partly constraints imposed, ironically, by the setting and by how the director had decided to use same. I was feeling quite forgiving of that when I thought it was an all-amateur production, but now that I discover it was professionally directed, can't help feeling that the use of space in the second act should have been better thought through. If I were ever to see it again I would love to see it done in a small studio space, to see whether that second act feels very different when some of it is allowed to come through quietly rather than at full volume.
It's terribly TSE, though, I have to say, both in its themes (the meaning of action and intention; life and death, will and fate; man's relation to God; powers temporal and spiritual) and in individual lines ("The New Year waits. Destiny waits for the coming.") Am going to have to go and read it now, which is never a bad thing. And it was certainly an atmospheric evening.
... well, a bit of a curate's egg, actually. I was under the impression before we went that it was an OUDS (student) production, and had it been an all-student effort it would have been a very good one; but checking just now, it was professionally directed, which makes me feel a bit sterner towards some of the flaws.
(Though admittedly, some of the things that didn't work for me are I suspect inherent in the material rather than the production's fault; I muttered at the end into the Resident Geek's ear something along the lines of having just demonstrated that TSE was a better poet than a dramatist, at which point RG retorted that what on earth had made me think it was a drama?)
The Cathedral was obviously a gorgeously appropriate setting - dark, candle-lit, incense-scented - but actually brought its own problems, particularly in the second half. The first half was all played in the central crossing, under the tower, which created an intimate, in-the-round feel which worked very well; the young actor playing Becket was fantastically cast, tall and rangy and ascetic-looking, all Norman pride and burning intensity, and the scenes where he is confronted by his successive Tempters were highly charged and very effective. The Chorus worked well in the first half too; much of the chorus work (they're the women of Canterbury, though obviously heavily indebted to the idea of a classical Greek chorus) was sung, beautifully set in a style reminiscent of Gregorian chant, and while there were a few weaker voices there were some very fine singers who carried the rest easily enough.
For Act Two most of us had to move seats, so that we were strung out up and down the nave - RG and I chose to sit fairly well up in the canons' stalls, because clearly the denouement was going to occur before the High Altar; but with hindsight we should have stayed as close to the centre as we could. Using the whole of the nave space was an ambitious decision and it was a brave attempt, but it presented some fairly major technical problems: the unison chorus work fell apart (not entirely the fault of the cast, because with a nave the length of CCh's, and all the echo and timelag, it's just not possible to keep people at the two ends of the nave sounding in unison wherever the listener is); and the actors clearly felt that at all times they must be audible to people at both ends of the Cathedral, which resulted in the entire second act being rather one-note, and that note being SHOUTY. Now I can quite see, even without having previously read the play, that by its nature much of Act Two is declamatory; but the need to physically SHOUT removed any possibility of variation in tone, or of the moments of intimacy which had made the first half so powerful
[ETA: I chatted this morning to a friend who sings at Christchurch and also went to last night's performance, and who agreed with me on the undesirability of trying to split the cast along the length of the nave in the second act. She said that apparently during the first few nights of the run they were performing the second act in a much tighter space largely before the high altar - but that had caused problems in that not all the audience could see properly; it simply isn't possible to cram everyone into the canons' stalls which are about the only place from which you could see that space clearly. We agreed that a better solution would have been to try to be more creative with the seating...]
So I found it, dramatically, rather unsatisfying in the end which was a shame; partly I suspect unevenness of tone of the original play (which doesn't seem quite able to decide if it's a mystery play, or (at brief moments in the first half) a character drama, or a modern courtroom drama, or a poem, and veers uneasily between all of these), and partly constraints imposed, ironically, by the setting and by how the director had decided to use same. I was feeling quite forgiving of that when I thought it was an all-amateur production, but now that I discover it was professionally directed, can't help feeling that the use of space in the second act should have been better thought through. If I were ever to see it again I would love to see it done in a small studio space, to see whether that second act feels very different when some of it is allowed to come through quietly rather than at full volume.
It's terribly TSE, though, I have to say, both in its themes (the meaning of action and intention; life and death, will and fate; man's relation to God; powers temporal and spiritual) and in individual lines ("The New Year waits. Destiny waits for the coming.") Am going to have to go and read it now, which is never a bad thing. And it was certainly an atmospheric evening.