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.
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