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York Minster Mystery Plays 2016


The great York cycle of medieval mystery plays has once more been resurrected and is currently being staged inside York Minster itself in an adaptation by Mike Poulton. With just a couple of professional actors, this is a great community production in the noble tradition of the mysteries in which each pageant was sponsored and staged by local artisan-guilds.

Just as in the Middle Ages, immense care and expense has been lavished on the project. The whole of salvation history from Creation to Doomsday is played out in the minster's vast nave, and principally on a precipitously sloped end-on stage, with steps galore. The great host of actors are beautifully choreographed and, while the playing is mixed, some of the amateur performances are very fine and affecting. Max Jones and Ruth Hall's superb designs are truly spectacular.

In the Creation, vast helium-filled planets form a heavenly cosmos up in the sublime vaults; trees are wheeled in on wagons (a nice touch, given that the original plays were staged on pageant-wagons). Fish and birds emerge from all directions, manipulated and displayed in various ways, with some of the fowls of the air fluttering on the ends of long poles. The pièce de résistance is a blue whale split into three parts. The timing of its three human carriers ensure that the leviathan glides through the cathedral in stately fashion.

The result is wonder. One would wish to launch into a canticle of praise to all creation along with Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego.

The choir, concealed beneath the vertiginous stairway, did indeed chant Veni creator spiritus. Their regular liturgical accompaniments, true to mystery tradition, enhanced and complemented the whole.

Noah's end-on Ark, constructed on stage, eventually housed an array of gloriously fabricated animals worn on heads and bodies or carried singly or between several bodies: hoppity rabbits, fierce rhinos and sabre-toothed lions, huge-headed elephants, and, rearing up from the back of the Ark, two giraffes. A pair of dodos missed the boat. All of these creaturely costumes, masks and contraptions were a joy and of consummate artisanal skill.

The Flood itself consisted of immense swathes of blue cloth, shaken at intervals by its carriers, to provoke waves to ripple through the whole. Simple but highly pleasurable. For Christ's Baptism in the Jordan, a very long white sheet was similarly ruffled. At the moment of Jesus's immersion, the cloth-manipulators proceeded to bind him in the white cloth and, in seconds, we were presented with a delightful representation, both of medieval sculpted drapery and the sculpted depiction of flowing water. I have seen such depictions of Christ's Baptism: an excellent touch. Angels, too, sported medieval wigs; God the Father started off the play in a rather Zeus-like mask which was in fact a copy from a stained-glass window in the Minster.

Further design high-points were: a decadent Herod, the train of whose golden gown spanned almost the entire long length of the palace steps; and Lucifer and the denizens of Hell who emerged from a tomb-like portal which billowed red smoke and which did, in fact, double as Christ's tomb. The leathery fiends were kitted out in full medieval devil gear, with horns on heads, and accompanied by skeletal predators and hell-hounds, all in a manner worthy of Dürer or Bosch. By Doomsday, glorious Lucifer was reduced to bearing a haunting skeletal mask, a warning against vanity and a memento mori: the skull beneath the skin. Protean Lucifer popped up throughout the performance to exert his baleful influence.

So much is excellent in the Mysteries but only God is perfect. Unfortunately, Phillip Breen, the director has over-reached himself. The production at over three and a half hours, including a short interval, is far too long. (Uncomfortable seating does not help matters.)

The extant list of mystery pageants - the short playlets which made up the cycle in York - amounts to around 50. Each pageant lasted, say, an average of 15-20 minutes. Poulton's script drew on 35 of these.

So you see the problem. By striving to include so much, Breen and his directorial collaborators crammed simply too much in. There was a resulting lack of focus and dramatic impact.

This was most unfortunate. Part One, prior to the interval, derived from more than twenty of the pageants, and, very fine though it was, could well have made up the entire evening's performance with its own interval half-way through. Fatigue well and truly set in for Part Two, the Passion to Doomsday (fourteen pageants). A great pity for there were some lovely performances.

At the same time, the attempt to accommodate so much material led to some strange editing and focusing. Pontius Pilate, the 'perelous prince', was stripped of his arrogance and sense of cold danger. The full sadism exhibited by the soldiers and Chief Priests towards Jesus (the celebrated 'buffeting') was jettisoned with a focus instead on a concentration on the mock-coronation of Christ. There was an odd and needlessly protracted splicing of Doomsday with a martial Harrowing of Hell; and poor Jesus, seemingly too full of energy, had to sit on the steps and wait to be crucified, rather than being shockingly hoisted up on high and into view on the wood of the cross.

Historically, and significantly, the mysteries left the precincts of the cathedrals and were played out on the streets, owned by the people who produced them and participated in the ritual of their staging. The sacred mingled with the profane. One casualty of this spectacular production was that it was too hieratic and hierarchical. Furthermore, the sheer distance of the audience from the actors, playing on a vast end-on stage reminiscent of the designs of Adolphe Appia, sacrificed the invaluable sense of visceral intimacy of the mysteries. I had my binoculars to hand and they were invaluable but they only served to allow me to discern things happening a good way off.

I can understand the temptation to seek to stage the Mysteries in one evening but I would strongly advise that this temptation is resisted.

A great model to follow would be that of Tony Harrison's National Theatre version which was staged in three parts. If one evening it has to be then I would suggest simply focusing on certain key pageants, say half the number Poulton worked on. (A further regret was that Breen's production lost much of the typological significance of the whole cycle.)

It is always a joy to see the pageant-wagon productions in York. If it were possible, it would be great to see the entirety of the pageants staged over a regular evolving time period.

The Mysteries ends tonight and, despite my caveats, I applaud the vision and manifold successes of this production.

Read more about the York Minster Mystery Plays here: https://yorkminster.org/mysteryplays2016/home.html

Dr Philip Crispin is a lecturer in Drama at the University of Hull

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