The York Mystery Plays - 2006 production.
| The 2006 cycle blended some familiar plays with some
less familiar and infrequently performed episodes from
the York cycle. The overall architecture of the proposed
cycle was retained: a narrative of the Christian history
of mankind from Creation to Last Judgement.
The selection was somewhat darker in tone than that
offered in 2002. There wais a greater
emphasis on the conflict between good and evil with
repeated confrontations between God/Christ and Lucifer/Satan. |
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Bailey and the Young York Civic
Trust performed The Barkers' Pageant Of The Fall
Of The Angels, the first of 12 plays to be presented
by the Guilds of York, the plays' original benefactors
who have revived their role of financial angel of the
four-yearly cycle of street theatre so enthusiastically.
Groups of medieval Town Waites from the UK and the
Continent accompanied
the waggons through the streets of York.
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The number of plays has increased from ten to
12 since the 2002 production, but there was one fewer
station' in the hope of speeding up the pageant waggons'
progress from Dean's Park to College Green, St Sampson's
Square and finally Museum Gardens.
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Pageant Master Dr Mike Tyler scurried here and there,
walkie-talkie at hand, to ensure smooth traffic as the
Plays and their medieval musicians wended their
way through the Sunday sway of shoppers and even, on
the first Sunday, the loud chanting of excitable French
students awaiting the World Cup Final.
The wittiest play came early, The Plasterers' Pageant
Of The Creation Of The World To The Fifth Day. There
was amusement in the apt placement of Gods (Brian
Wilsons) pulpit on stone walling to signify this was
the Guild of Building's play. The creation of heaven,
earth, day and night, and a water-squirting whale was
conducted in the manner of a puppet theatre's box of
tricks. |
Lee Gemmell, hair lank, face daubed in red and tongue
flicking like a viper, was a devilishly good Lucifer
in York St John University College's The Creation Of
Adam And Eve.
The Company of Butchers had built the
first new waggon for "perhaps 500 years" (as
the programme put it), a wooden construction with
ropes and pulleys to lever Jesus's cross into the
upright position.
Heslington Church rejoiced in a
multinational cast with a Korean Church choir and
a Trinidadian Mary Magdalene in Lind Ali.
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These street plays are not set in stone and must
always evolve, a credo exemplified by Pocklington School's
debut production, The Descent Of The Holy Spirit at
Pentecost. Vibrant, imaginative and blessed with the
spirit of a Godspell or Jesus Christ Superstar, it
thrilled with its stilt walkers, outbursts of drumming
and synchronised plant-pot throwing and blowing of
bubbles to signify Jesus's Ascension.
The finale, was
the apocalyptic gloom of York Settlement Players'
The Last Judgement, presented on a waggon pulled by
an army Land Rover. |
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