The Southwark Mysteries

Director: Sarah Davey. Designer: Annie Kelly. Musical Director: Richard Kilgour. The core professional cast featured Roddy McDevitt as Jesus, Jacqueline Haigh as Satan, Peter Marinker as Yahweh, Di Sherlock as Goose / Mary Magdalene, with John Constable as John Crow and a large community cast of adults and children from three local schools. A capacity audience attended the performance, which began in Shakespeare’s Globe and ended in Southwark Cathedral.

Set on Bankside, Constable’s Mystery Plays begin with a band of Jubilee Line Tunnellers inadvertently raising the spirits of The Goose and John Crow at Cross Bones. Satan appears to announce the Day of Judgement, and to claim The Whore (Goose), The Heretic (Crow), and all the other wicked souls of Bankside. He unleashes Oliver Cromwell and his Puritans, who are in the act of closing the theatre, when…

Jesus appears, riding a bike, bearing a radical teaching of mutual forgiveness. He recognises The Goose as Mary Magdalene, wrestling with Satan for her soul. John Crow is not so sure he wants to be forgiven, reminding Jesus of the abominations that have been carried out in his name. The first act ends with Jesus conducting a healing ritual, re-enacting his crucifixion on an operating table in Guy’s Hospital.

The second act takes place in Southwark Cathedral, which has been taken over by Satan and his devils. They are in the process of inflicting horrific punishments on The Goose, Crow and the other Lost Souls. Their orgy of retribution is interrupted by Jesus bursting into the Cathedral. He challenges Satan for each of the Lost Souls, finding creative ways of forgiving and embracing them into his Divinity. The Mystery Plays culminate in a vision of healing divisions – between Flesh and Spirit, and between different cultures and creeds. It evokes Liberty as a spiritual state, in which differing belief-systems creatively interact, healing the wounds of time in a Vision of Eternity…

The work seeks to reconcile Christian and pagan traditions, the old patriarchal Godhead with its compassionate, life-affirming sakti or “female part”. Some Christian 'fundamentalists' were shocked by what they saw as profanity, and by Jesus’ easy going attitude to sexual morality:

The Sunday Telegraph, May 14th 2000

DEAN REJECTS CRITICS OF 'SWEARING JESUS' MYSTERY PLAY

A religious play staged in an Anglican cathedral has provoked fury after it featured a swearing Jesus and Satan wearing a phallus.

The Southwark Mysteries was produced by Southwark Cathedral and Shakespeare’s Globe in south London as part of the capital’s 'String of Pearls' Millennium celebrations. It mixed bawdy medieval scenes with modern imagery and referred to bishops engaging in homosexual sex with altar boys and priests visiting prostitutes. The character of Jesus, who rode onto stage on a bicycle, was shown apparently condoning a range of sexual activities, while Satan told scatological jokes and ordered Jesus to 'kiss my a***'. At one point Jesus was admonished by St Peter for his swearing and responded: 'In the house of the harlot, man must master the language.' At another, Satan, played by a female actor, strapped on 'a huge red phallus' before using it to beat his sidekick, Beelzebub.

The play was written by John Constable, who said that he had deliberately wanted to challenge Christians. 'Profanity is a theme of the play', he said. 'The point of it was to explore the sacred through the profane. ' Mr Constable said he had worked closely with Mark Rylance, the Globe’s artistic director, and the Dean of Southwark, the Very Rev Colin Slee, who conceived the idea of a joint production to mark William Shakespeare’s birthday falling on Easter Day. He said the clergy had made a number of suggestions about the content, but he had not acted on all of them. 'They did ask me to make sure that Satan did not wear the phallus in the presence of Jesus, which I did', he said.

The first section of the play, which contained much of the bawdy material, was staged at the Globe, and the final part, 'The Harrowing of Hell' in the cathedral. 'Colin Slee was very robust in keeping me on the straight and narrow', Constable said. 'The play is a new version of the traditional medieval Mystery plays, which were religious in nature but accepted human imperfections and took place in a carnival atmosphere. It seemed to be well received by most people who saw it.'

But one member of the audience, Simon Fairnington, has condemned the play as 'disgustingly offensive', saying that it 'revelled in the glorification of vice'. In a letter to the Dean he complained: 'Had the play been a pure ly secular production, one might not have been surprised at its treatment of Christian belief. What was dismaying was that it was sponsored and performed in part within a Christian cathedral. The cynical part of me wonders whether this is simply a sign of the times, and the way the Church of England cares about its Gospel and its God.' Anthony Kilmister, chairman of the Prayer Book Society, said: 'This is not the sort of play that should be performed in God’s house. It is quite disgraceful.'

But the Dean, who was the centre of controversy a few years ago when he allowed the cathedral to be used for a Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement celebration, defended the play. The performance was in keeping with traditional Mystery plays and 'portrayed graphically the life and history of the area' which was 'where the seamier side of life was to be found', he said. 'The message was that even the worst sins are not beyond redemption', he added.

Most of the audience responded positively to the underlying message of mutual forgiveness. Like the Dean, many accepted Satan’s bawdy, blasphemous words and deeds as part of the Mystery Tradition. The theologian Jeffrey John was of the opinion that, despite some obvious heretical tendencies, Constable was presenting 'remarkably orthodox Christian teachings going back to the first century AD'. Constable’s Harrowing of Hell is closely modelled on a play from the medieval York Cycle. His version shows Jesus’ spirit of forgiveness triumphing over the letter of The Law. Jesus’ ultimate 'Judgement' is a verse paraphrase of Matthew 26: 35-45.

  JESUS

  My blessed children, I shall say

When your good deed was to me done.

When man or woman, night or day,

Asked for your help, your heart not stone,

Did not pass by or turn away,

You saw that, in me, they too are One.

But you that cursed them, said them nay,

Your curse did cut me to the bone.

When I had need of meat and drink,

You offered me an empty plate.

When I was clasped and chained in Clink,

You frowned, and left me to my fate.

Where I was teetering on the brink,

Did bolt and bar your iron gate.

When I was drowning, you let me sink.

When I cried for help, you came too late.

  RESPONSE

  When had you, Lord, who all things has

Hunger or thirst, or helplessness?

Had we but known God a prisoner was

We would surely have sought to ease His distress.

How could God be sick or dying? Alas!

When was He hungry, thirsty, or homeless?

How could such things come to pass?

When did we to thee such wickedness?

  JESUS

  Dead souls! When any bid

You pity them, you did but blame.

You heard them not, your heart you hid.

Your guilt told you they should be shamed.

Your thought was but the earth to rid

Of them I am now come to claim.

To the poorest wretch, whate’er you did,

To me you did the self and same.