Murder in the Cathedral

by T. S. Eliot

seen at the Church of St John the Divine, Richmond on 14 October 2026

Tom Littler and Francesca Ellis direct David Suchet as Archbishop Thomas Becket and a supporting cast of twenty-three in an Orange Tree Theatre production of T. S. Eliot's 1935 play Murder in the Cathedral performed in a nearby church.

Robert Jones has adapted the layout of the church by adding a screen of wrought metal before the high altar, which itself is draped with cloth and festooned with candles (lit in the second half). The central aisle of the nave has also been transformed into an acting space by placing a raised platform above it for its entire length. This, together with a slight mistiness enhanced by incense reinforces the atmosphere of the play, which was originally performed in the Chapter House of Canterbury Cathedral, and of course commemorates the notorious murder of the Archbishop in 1170 in the cathedral itself.

The play is not a narrative history of the dealings of King Henry II and his chancellor turned archbishop, unlike Jean Anouilh's play on which the film Becket was made with Peter O'Toole as the king and Richard Burton as Becket. Indeed, the king does not appear in Eliot's play at all. Rather, the play concentrates on the last month of Becket's life when he returned to Canterbury from self-imposed exile in France, apparently well aware that his fractious relationship with secular authority (and even ecclesiastical rivalries) might lead to his own death. After an intemperate outburst from the king four knights indeed travelled in haste to Canterbury and on December 29th murdered the archbishop.

The play is heavily influenced by Greek tragedy, with a chorus of the women of Canterbury providing numerous interludes of poetic reflection on the transient perils of hard life; in this production many of their interludes are sung to the specially composed music of Orlando Gough. In a church setting there are subliminal hints of church singing (though at the time this would have been exclusively provided by men) as well as folk-motifs derived from seasonal chants.

In the meantime, in the first half, Becket is confronted by four Tempters, providing a series of reflections on the nature of action and suffering, and the dangers of embracing martyrdom with muddled motives. The difficult task of embodying these often intellectual points in dramatic form is largely resolved by the clear language and the evocative choreography of this production in its church setting.

In the second half, after the archbishop delivers his Christmas morning sermon on peace and the apparent contradiction of celebrating both the birth of Jesus and his death in conducting a Mass, the Tempters return as the Knights, and the rarefied arguments give way to impassioned argument and threat. The confrontation is rendered all the more powerful by the use of the space in the church as Becket faces down his opponents but refuses to compromise his beliefs.

Astonishingly the four Knights deliver long speeches justifying their actions, asking us to reconsider our judgements of what has happened and who was in the right. Much of this speech-making is self-serving and the political and prudential points are delivered in the eloquent but often condescending tones which may be familiar to us in the outside world. What may have seemed an ancient dispute mired in medieval quarrels is revealed to be relevant to the modern world after all. Political expediency is still rampant and still has its eloquent defenders.

It is fascinating to see a modern play so clearly influenced by classical Greek precedents, particularly so soon after seeing the modern retelling of Antigone Exits. Equally fascinating to have seen a play about martyrdom and self-sacrifice for one's ideals so soon after a small and quiet light (intriguingly produced at the same time by the same theatre company as this production) showed us a similar trajectory in the twentieth century. This play, though testing in its form, was really powerful in its effect. 

David Suchet was superb as the Archbishop, intellectually brilliant, warm in the Christmas sermon, and ultimately brave and yet poignantly almost faltering under physical threat. The supporting cast - including a late replacement for one of the Tempters/Knights with script in hand but barely used - was also excellent.

Antigone Exits

by Nina Segal

seen at the Minerva Theatre Chichester on 10 October 2026

Jeff James directs Nina Cassells as Antigone, Max Bennett as Creon, Anushka Chakravarti as Ismene, Brandon Bassir as Haemon, Lizzy Watts as Eurydice, Testimony Adegbite as the Messenger and Melody Chikakane Brown as Teiresias in Nina Segal's play Antigone Exits based on Sophocles's tragedy (5th century BCE).

The story of Antigone, daughter of King Oedipus of Thebes and Jocasta his mother and wife, and sister of two brothers who died fighting each other for the throne of Thebes after their father's abdication and death, remains essentially unchanged in this newest version of the play, but the formal structure of Sophocles's play - confrontations interspersed with choric interludes - is replaced by a studied modern informality, and references to the gods are replaced by more general appeals to moral imperatives.

There are no curtains in the Minerva Theatre so everything is revealed to the audience as soon as they enter the auditorium. For this production, designed. by Alex Lowe, there is a golden yellow floor, with some large rocks at the back supporting a quarter of a huge hollow white sphere which has a stark passageway at the back. Sitting perched in the sphere is the entire cast chatting quietly among themselves until the play begins.

The back story needs to be explained of course - not the full tale of Oedipus's woes, which would be too distracting, but the more recent strife between the brothers who could not agree on their arrangements for ruling the city as alternating kings, and who have killed each other in the resulting civil war. Their uncle Creon (their mother's brother) has taken control and decreed honourable burial for one brother (Eteocles the defender of the city) and effective desecration of the body of the other (Polynices, who attacked the city) . It is this decree to which Antigone objects, claiming that both brothers deserve respectful burial, even though her attempt to provide this rite will lead to her own death.

All this is economically managed by the cast taking up the story, the phrases moving from one speaker to the next, at the opening of the play. In fact, the device of the cast telling the story as well as being the characters within it persists throughout, with varying degrees of effectiveness. Often it seems as if the characters are just speaking their thoughts aloud in the middle of the action, which gives an immediacy to the dilemmas they are facing. In particular, Antigone's determination to honour Polynices drives her to an acceptance of her own death, which must be presented in a way that does not alienate the audience despite the overtones of recklessness and even self-indulgence that could hover round it. Nina Cassells largely maintains sympathy in this potentially difficult task.

Creon too must be comprehensible, not merely a despot issuing unreasonable decrees. Unfortunately his decision, which looks pragmatic at one level - honouring the defender but not the attacker - is highly questionable in other ways, but Creon is unable to face up to the problem he has caused until it is too late: for him political authority, once invoked, cannot be weakened by concessions, especially to one's own family. Both characters are intransigent, but perhaps in our modern world with its emphasis on the individual's right to live by her or his own lights, Antigone's personal passion is more compelling than Creon's more intellectual reasoning about the nature of political power.

The sense of impending doom is relentless, marked by a constant slow drumbeat (sound designed by Kieran Lucas), and visualised by a great circle of black fluid poured out over the yellow stage by Antigone symbolising her first attempt to honour her brother's body. The cast nimbly avoid treading in this mire until the sense of catastrophe is so intense that being stained with it can serve as a visual reminder of the spreading contamination which threatens Creon's attempt to draw a line under the chaos which has afflicted Thebes.

Inserted into the classical story are a series of interludes provided by most of the members of the cast, replacing the choric interludes of the original (which serve to comment on and generalise the action). These monologues, some of them powerful in themselves, are to some extent a distraction from the main thrust of the play. The Messenger speaks first with an account of the first dead body he saw, that of a fox, while playing with his brother. I thought that a messenger might well have had this experience as a young boy, and so was not prepared for Haemon's (or Brandon's) account of not knowing his father but imagining that a TV star might fit the role. Was this Brandon's experience - or is it what any actor taking the part of Haemon in this play would be given to say? Later interludes were even more intrusive, and some were arguably in poor taste. Antigone's claim that we are collectively cursed by our non-interventionist witness of modern atrocities, while extremely powerful in the midst of a play about the curse hanging over Thebes, was perilously close to hitting the symbolic point home with a sledgehammer. 

The story remains powerfully dramatic; the pared back visual style suited its universality; the cast was excellent; not every intervention by the author was successful.

a small and quiet light

by Stephanie Street

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 29 September 2026

Elin Schofield directs Priyanga Burford as Noor-un-Nisa Inaya Khan and Caoilfhionn Dunne as Vogt with a supporting cast of five taking all the other parts in a small and quiet light, a play about Noor-un-Nisa, a cosmopolitan woman of mixed heritage (Indian father and American mother) who became an SOE/ resistance operator in occupied Paris until she was betrayed to the Germans, interrogated and eventually deported to Dachau.

The play opens with the beginning of the interrogation by the Gestapo officer Ernst Vogt, and it employs numerous flashbacks to earlier episodes in Noor-un-Nisa's life: born in Paris, but moved to Britain once her father had departed to India; recruited by the SOE despite some reservations concerning her suitability, and finally a hectic time evading capture when again in Paris, until the fateful betrayal. With an all-female cast taking all the parts, it requires concentration by the audience: there are very few costume changes, so context, mannerisms and accents are of vital importance, and there are helpful projections of the dates of each scene. However, the requisite attention is well repaid as the story unfolds and the complex personality of the principal character is revealed.

Priyanga Burford brings a clear-cut intensity to the principal role: Noor-un-Nisa is passionate, at times wayward, fiercely patriotic and unexpectedly resilient under pressure: a reckless bravery, verging on foolhardiness, enables her to resist the psychological pressure exerted by the insistent and apparently friendly Vogt, though ultimately there is no escape from the degrading rigours of the concentration camp (thankfully reported rather than depicted). 

Such a career seems almost quaint, and certainly hard to fathom, in this modern more cynical age, and there is an element of the "derring-do" of the classic war movies of the 1950s and early 1960s, though with a salutary reminder that much of the work involved was performed by women as competently as by men (if not more so, depending on temperament).That Noor-un-Nisa's story is relatively unknown is partly due to the general secrecy of the whole enterprise, but also to the ease with which non-whites and women are casually erased from the picture when broad strokes are painted. This play shows us a woman who was far more than a two-dimensional hero of the resistance, reminding us that such careers were often suited to quirky people who were prepared to take what most of us would consider insane risks for their ideals.