GENERAL consensus has it that verse drama tends to be dramatically

lifeless. Steve Pimlott's modern dress production now down from last

year's Stratford season, however, genuinely captures T. S. Eliot's best

spirit to make it a fiery Play-For-Today -- a coup really in view of the

fact that in comparison with Anouilh's Becket, a rumbustious, highly

personalised treatment of the same two self-willed individuals, Eliot's

is an intensely spiritual exploration.

It even ends with the Christian prayer of supplication, Christ have

mercy on us, Lord have mercy on us.

Yet Pimlott's production, with its clear, clean lineaments -- a simple

purple carpet in the form of a cross about which the major events are

centred -- manages to release much of the power and energy of Eliot's

words that, in themselves, are never less than elegant and constantly

amaze in the way they convey so economically not only the common

everyday practice of religious faith but also martyrdom's seductive

charms.

This is not only because Michael Feast's tense, gaunt Becket bears all

the hallmarks of the charismatic; his precision and commitment is

matched by a company who make us feel that here is a community of souls

-- female chorus, tempters, loyal priests and murdering knights --

agonisingly, fearfully and sometimes ironically in the midst of history

in the making.

Eliot's real coup de grace, though, is in bringing back the four

assassins to engage the audience in a very contemporary debate on the

pros and cons of political expediency. With full lights up, we are,

imply Pimlott and Eliot, all implicated when acts of violence are

perpetrated in the name of the State. Murder In The Cathedral's

Christian polemic may not be to everybody's taste but Pimlott's

production ensures it has a burning topicality.