Great setting…
Just back from Murder in the Cathedral at Southwark Cathedral.
Probably the greatest of the mid 20th Century English verse dramas (out of a very narrow field, but great nonetheless), this production by the Scena Mundi Theatre Company of Eliot’s 1935 drama visits just 3 cathedrals between now and 14th November, to celebrate (can that be the right word?) the 850th (actually 849th) anniversary of the December 1170 assassination.
Although Southwark is English Gothic (and in fact much - everything west of the Choir - is a good Victorian Gothic restoration) rather than the Norman edifice of the actual Murder, the atmosphere feels sort-of right, and the cathedral echo entirely so.
Without a convincing Becket, as a staged drama, this won’t work, and in Jasper Britton they had someone who could offer both pious archbishop and former playboy Chancellor – the different roles playing across his face. He was also genuinely commanding in his presence.
The production (dressed theatrical 12th century) made good use of the cathedral, and occasional plainsong and the whiff of incense created the right atmosphere.
The Knights’ prose apologia at the end read like the worst sort of business or political PR guff, some things, at least, have not changed since before the war, but Eliot would have been informed by the lies of Nazi and Fascist and Stalinist apologia and propaganda.
A murdered Becket sits up to listen to them explaining why everything they did was justified, and responding with amused incredulity as they did.
[And as a final note, the original author of the lines starting ‘A cold coming we had of it’ used by Eliot in his ‘Journey of the Magi’, was Bishop Launcelot Andrews, in a sermon for Christmas 1622, - he actually wrote “A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solsitio brumali, “the very dead of winter.”, and he is buried in the cathedral overlooking this performance. Despite the lack of attribution by Eliot for this ‘borrowing’ I heard no turning from his tomb].