Medieval dramas are an odd beast and very difficult to put on. The language is difficult, the drama staid, the scenes incredibly familiar to us all: the fall of Lucifer; the eating of the apple; the casting out from the Garden of Eden. To justify putting them on you really need a good idea as to how and why you’re going to do it. This production, in lieu of ideas, simply abandons one play out of boredom and then starts a new one, before abandoning that one too. The York Cycle is disjointed as it is, moving from the creation of the universe to the Crucifixion in just a few scenes. To stop halfway and move straight into a very short bit of the completely different play Everyman before morphing into The Chymical Wedding, without any warning, beggars all sense.
And this isn’t where the confusing logic behind the show ends. In case we thought attempting to do all the medieval plays in 45 minutes just didn’t afford the company enough material, the actors enter halfway through reciting Wilfred Owen’s great anti-war poem Dulce Et Decorum Est. Why? I am struggling to work it out. I mean, yes, the fall of man was bad and the First World War was also bad, but I need a little more justification than that before I accept the need to thrust the phrase ‘Gas! Gas! Quick boys!’ in the midst of medieval alliterative verse. As for the verse itself, there’s no attempt to make it interesting for a modern audience, the tricky Middle English turns of phrase needing a whole lot of push, even from professionals, to turn into dynamic, vibrant dialogue. The woodenness on display here, however, makes it thud on the Vault floor. Adam and Eve greet the news of their banishment from Eden with the vague perturbment of a couple being told that the garden centre is closing in half an hour.
The pace is grindingly slow even given the short run-time, with endless scene changes leaving awkward gaps. The singing of ‘Adam lay ybounden’ was similarly unsure and uneven; this was amdram with the emphasis on am. By not committing to any one play the company come across as not trusting any of them to be worth showing in their entirety and, quite apart from the lacklustre theatrics, remove all the dignity from these great old tales. I applaud the effort, but this play is in a well and truly fallen state.
