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| The Mystery Plays tapestry quilt by B.J.Elvgren, displayed in Chester Cathedral |
I once met a nun who felt called to a cloistered life after being captivated by the musical Godspell as a teenager. I confess that I too find dramatic representations of the Passion of Christ encountered outside of the liturgy of the church to be particularly powerful. One of the most arresting such experiences has been watching the Mystery Plays.
In July we saw friends
perform in the latest production of the Chester cycle, which today is
the largest regularly produced community theatre event in the UK, performed by
unpaid volunteers. This near complete cycle of plays owes its existence to the
wealth of the medieval guilds who popularised their production by moving
performances onto carts in the streets and preserving most of the scripts in
the homes of members and their descendants after the plays were prohibited in
1575.
It is said that the
original set of twenty four plays covering scenes from the Creation to the Last
Judgement were divided
between the guilds - Grocers, Bakers and Millers performing the Last
Supper, the Ironmongers in charge of The Crucifixion scene.
Some suggest that today
the plays are named as a result of this connection to the lives of working
people - based on evidence that ‘mystery’ - derived from the Latin ministerium - was used by some
guilds to
describe their crafts.
Generating such a connection
for the audience was a key objective for this
year’s director John Young, who eschewed recent thematic staging and design
(evocatively deployed in the 2018 production which focussed on creation care)
seeking to capture the immediacy of medieval street theatre - an aim that he
achieved with aplomb.
The audience, rather than
the performers are now raised and face each other either side of a central
“street” in the nave of Chester Cathedral. This is close enough to Cain’s face
to encounter his change in ‘countenance’ (as the King James Version puts it) in
Play Three (Genesis 4.5) and discern individual drops of ‘blood’ from the hands
of the wailing mothers after cradling the bodies of their innocent sons
murdered by Herod (Matthew 2.16) in Play Seven. The close proximity allows for
ad-libbed audience interaction by the three comical shepherds (Play Six).
In sensing that the
staging adds a binary flavour to the performance, I think Mark Fisher, writing
in The
Guardian,overlooks the inherent symmetry - with Christ at the centre of the
entire production (players and audience alike reflecting from him).
Even when Christ is
physically absent, such as in the early plays focussing on creation (which
cleverly accentuate the symmetry of the first creation account in Genesis in
the dialogue between the two actors playing God), Christ’s presence is felt;
the tree of life placed in the same location as the cross, referencing a
tradition that the timber is one and the same. Christ comes to stand alongside
the other two ‘persons’ of God after his Ascension into heaven (Play 16).
Fisher notes that the
seating means we “never lose sight of being an audience”. Our proximity ensured
everyone opposite could see my tears - as I could see theirs.
Like their medieval
counterparts, performers in the revival plays, which began in the fifties and
are staged in Chester every five years, find their lives become intertwined
with the story of the Passion.
Our friends are the latest
generation of their family to take part in the play - our goddaughter, her
brother and their father, who played Lazarus. Sacrifices had to be made to fit
school, work and family life around the rigorous rehearsal and performance
schedule, which lasted several months. We were grateful that they were able to
spend the morning with us before preparing for the matinee performance.
Walking around the City
centre, we saw Joseph helping a lady down some steps from the shops. After
having lunch with Lazarus and his family we said hello to Caiaphas who was
having coffee on the next table (who we recognised as Mrs Noah from a previous
production).
Encountering these “characters” as they went about their daily business was a powerful reminder that all our lives are bound by the living Word of the greatest story ever told. The symmetry in John Young’s clever production of the 2023 Chester Mystery Play helps us to remember that whoever we encounter today – whether coffee with Caiaphas or with a close friend – Jesus is the ever-present point of reflection between us, whose image we reflect.
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