York Minster Mystery Plays June 2016

'Have you come far?' 

- York Minster Mystery Plays volunteer to me

This post is rather late, given that we saw the plays on the 22nd June and it is now the beginning of September... still, better late than never! The reason for the delay is that I have been writing up a review of the plays as an academic paper, and my little brain does not like working on two things at once. Academia comes before blogging, so there you are. However, now that I have finished my paper, which is currently languishing in a long-suffering editor's inbox awaiting review, it is time to turn my attention to my rather neglected blog.

The Minster production of the mystery plays was the original inspiration for this year's English trip - their timing, just a few of months after handing in my MA thesis, was happily fortuitous and an excellent excuse for another trip back to Blighty. So back to Blighty I went, or more specifically back to York - this time with both my Grandmas, which made it even more special.

Despite being born a Lancashire rose I am very fond of the white rose county and of York in particular, which despite visiting only twice I have quite fallen in love with. So it was very nice to be back!

We went to a matinee performance of the plays, which turned out to be a good thing as the running time, billed at three and a half hours, ended up being nearer four. Thanks to jetlag, if we had gone in the evening I would probably have been gently snoozing long before Doomsday. On second thoughts, perhaps I wouldn't, as the Minster - all stone and shadow - was distinctly chilly.

By happy forethought, we had front row seats. It was a full house - testament to the popularity of the plays and this production in particular, which does seem to have been a fairly resounding success both with the critics and the general public. The Minster's nave had been converted into seating for around a thousand people - the third nearest the stage was flat but the back two-thirds was raked scaffolding, soaring up and back towards the West Window. 

The stage and set were huge, spread over four playing levels and linked by a series of wide, broad steps. Like the seating, the set reached upwards and backwards, almost to the top of the organ atop the quire screen. This kind of scale was of course the complete antithesis to the original performances of the play cycle, which were staged on small, mobile pageant wagons, but it worked well. Firstly, it evoked the scale and sweep of the cycle, which spans Biblical history from Creation to Doom, and secondly, well, such a big stage was necessary to accommodate the huge cast! This numbered roughly a hundred and forty, all except one (Philip McGinley, playing Christ) unpaid volunteers and many of them from the local community who have been performing in various productions of the plays for years (sometimes decades).

Out of so many characters, it is hard to pick favourites, but Philip McGinley was very good as Christ - though he puzzled me somewhat by making his first entrance clad rather incongruously in jeans and T-shirt but appearing thereafter in more conventional whitey-grey robes. Toby Gordon, as Lucifer, was (perhaps worryingly...) even better, but he reminded me of Dominic Cooper and once this thought had popped into my head it wouldn't pop out again. Ruby Baker as Mary and Mark Comer (one of the recurring devotees of the mystery plays) as Joseph were also excellent. Abraham I remember chiefly for the fact that he had to read his lines off a piece of paper hidden under his cloak (clearly someone was ill and he gamely stepped into the breach), Noah and Mrs Noah for their comic sparring, and Herod for his massive golden cape which spread over the entire stage and required an army of minions to manoeuver.

This version presented eighteen pageants (the original medieval play cycle has about forty-seven), though several of these consisted of two or three of the original short pageants run together into a longer section. The Middle English script had been 'lightly modernised,' retaining the alliterative rhythm of the original while introducing a few modern touches, such as Noah's 'Don't touch - the paint's not dry!' (said to God, inspecting the ark) and Lucifer's wail of 'It's not fair!' while being thrown into hell.

My two favourite episodes were the Creation and the Passion - the former for its colour, light and incredibly lifelike animal puppets, and the latter (which is really the heart of the entire cycle) for its solemn grandeur. Runners-up were the Nativity, for its tableaux effect, and the Entry into Jerusalem, for its movement and momentum.

No photographs of the actual performance - alas, this was not the free and easy Pop-Up Globe. But there are quite a few on the production's website, here.