Alison McRobb teaches philosophy and Hinduism, and chairs SoF Steering Committee Alison McRobb reviews Train Doors Slamming by John Pearson Writersworld. 2005. 267 pages. Pbk. £8.50. ISBN:1904181465 reviews Nobody with even a casual interest in cultural life in Britain today can have failed to notice that amongst the barrage of increasingly bizarre ‘lifestyle’ programmes in the media there has been an (albeit small) explosion of interest in matters that touch on world religions. At the time of writing, Radio 4 is featuring a series of short talks by David Starkey entitled ‘Who Killed Religion?’ in which Dr Starkey argues: ‘Five major figures distorted, even betrayed, the Christian faith as envisaged by Jesus.’ Three of the subjects up for investigation have been St Paul, the Emperor Constantine and Martin Luther. St Paul is also the subject of a new play Paul by Howard Brenton produced at the National Theatre, in which the aptly named Adam Godley plays the hero.
Paul is an interesting and in many ways, a difficult play and it is to the credit of the NT management that they have had the courage to produce a piece which requires of its audience more than usual concentration and commitment. I must confess here that had I not read the published script before seeing the play, I might well have lost my way in it. As it was, very often I had little idea of where, exactly, the action was taking place, nor of what date between AD 36 and AD 65 the story had reached.
Things were not helped by the fact that the play was staged on a permanent open-plan set, dressed with different-sized rocks and pebbles, neatly graded according to size. I spent more time than I should have done during the performance wondering whether the stones laid out at my feet had been purchased at a builder’s yard or collected from a Suffolk beach. To make matters more confusing the cast of 11 actors doubled many parts throughout the evening.
However there are intriguing ideas in this dramatised exploration of one of the great Christian myths, that of the resurrection of Christ from the dead. In one pivotal scene, the character of James suggests that Christ may not have died on the cross at all, but that he had been removed, alive, by his followers after a centurion on guard at the scene of the crucifixion deserted his post. Here Brenton seems to be exploring how myths come to be created.
The central moment in the play is Paul’s recitation from his Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 13), probably one of the best-loved passages in the New Testament and I must own to a feeling of disappointment that the speaking of it did not make my hair stand on end: (always my personal gauge as to how powerfully words or music have been communicated). Such a pivotal moment required more imaginative commitment and intensity from the otherwise excellent actor.
Live performances have their ups and downs and I saw the play three months into its run, but the friend who had accompanied me to the theatre departed at the interval, leaving me alone to ponder on the production’s missed opportunity. Paul is a rich play, but difficult to grasp at a single evening’s viewing, and is not therefore, in my opinion, a wholly successful theatrical venture.
An excellent revival of Gotthold Ephrain Lessing’s 1779 play Nathan the Wise (Nathan der Weise) played to packed houses at the Hampstead Theatre last autumn, the subject matter deftly hitting some relevant targets. Since the writer, Lessing, was himself Jewish, the overall view of the conflict between Christianity, Judaism and Islam is, perhaps understandably biased in favour of the benign Jewish hero – superbly played by Michael Pennington.
According to the informative programme notes provided by Edward Kemp, Lessing once famously said that if God offered him the choice between the truth or the quest for truth, he would choose the latter because ‘when we believe we have the truth we tend to do terrible things to other humans.’ Lessing believed passionately that religious differences need not divide humanity, and he set out to demonstrate this in his enjoyable story set in the time of the Third Crusade. The three main characters are Nathan the Jew, the Sultan Saladin, and a Templar. In Lessing’s retelling of a tale from Boccaccio, the Story of the Three Rings, ‘the possibility is held out that one day a judge might come who can tell us which of three rings is the true one.’ Meanwhile Nathan asks, ‘Must Jews and Christians be only Jews and Christians first and humans after?’ and suggests that no one religion has monopoly of wisdom: instead we should strive for ‘gentleness, tolerance, charity and humanity.’ Still, today, no bad aim for us all to work towards.
Cicely Herbert is one of the trio who founded and continue to run Poems on the Underground.