Temple

by Steve Waters

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 11 June 2015

The play, directed by Howard Davies and designed by Tim Hatley, features Simon Russell Beale as the Dean, Rebecca Humphries as the PA, Paul Higgins as the Canon Chancellor, Anna Calder-Marshall as the Virger, Malcolm Sinclair as the Bishop of London, and Shereen Martin as the City lawyer. It is set in the Chapter House of St Paul's Cathedral on the morning after the Chapter decided to support the City of London's application for an injunction to evict the Occupy movement from St Paul's Churchyard in late October 2011, which led to the immediate resignation of the Canon Chancellor (and the eventual resignation of the Dean).

The room in the Chapter House looks like a comfortable board room with gracious proportions and large sash windows. Outside is the imposing cathedral, but the sounds wafting through are those of the Occupy encampment, with the remorseless tolling of the church bells lending urgency to the general sense of crisis, as the Dean prepares to re-open the church after a fortnight's controversial closure, and the Canon Chancellor's public announcement of his resignation through Twitter appears to betray the collegiate sense of responsibility on which the Dean relies.

The critique of capitalism offered by the Occupy movement is not the subject of the play, although the PA, a temp brought in after the nervous collapse of the permanent PA, offers a supportive account of it when she finally gives advice to the Dean. The real focus is on the Dean himself, as his characteristic stance of detachment, amused or pained pedantry, and reliance on the traditional machinery of Church and Chapter governance are brought under intolerable stress. Simon Russell Beale gives a marvellously nuanced performance, showing us beneath the at times pompous and exasperatingly well-mannered exterior, a man who is deeply troubled by the situation he is in and the choices available to him. He is supported by an excellent cast - the impulsive Canon Chancellor (a nervy Paul Higgins), the reserved but formidable Bishop (Malcolm Sinclair exerting all the hauteur of authority), the dutiful Virger (Anna Calder-Marshall) and the initially gawky but fundamentally sympathetic PA (Rebecca Humphries). Into the ecclesiastical enclave erupts Shereen Martin as a frighteningly poised and self-confident City lawyer, whose busy timetable has no place for spiritual crisis.

The comfort of stability and convention is stripped away by this crisis, when contending views of how to proceed are not clearly right or wrong, but arise from different presuppositions and priorities. As the Dean prepares to celebrate the Eucharist, and (more controversially) to give the homily during the service (because he feels that a public statement must be made), one realises that even in this secular age, the crisis of conscience can still be sympathetically presented as the fulcrum of a dramatic situation, and that 'least bad' choices are not easy to identify or to live with.