Passion Plays Reviewed At ENO, Dulwich, Greenwich & Elsewhere

Tom Sutcliffe reviews the ENO production of Bach's St John Passion

St John Passion is not an opera. But when English National Opera included it in their season of opera productions, as a way of acknowledging the 250th anniversary of the great composer's death this year, they had a sell-out.

The last performance coincided with the Easter Vigil. The reviews were extremely mixed. For agnostic and non-churchgoing critics, the material demanded a certain consent on the part of its audience. What were they supposed to make of it? The St John Passion on stage seemed to require a response, an involvement - and something more positive than mere admiration and appreciation.

Bach's Passions have almost never been performed liturgically, since they were first created for the Lutheran Easter in the early 18th century. When they were re-discovered in the 19th century, they were treated as heavy oratorios. But their mixture of narrative, drama and discursive expressive comment amounts to something like a religious meditation.

Like religious pictures in galleries which are usually admired for their "beauty" and mastery of technique, Bach's two great Passion settings are widely loved and acknowledged as masterpieces. Religious pictures and liturgical music can evidently be quite a challenge for people who have rejected the imaginative world of religion and faith. Such people would seem to prefer it if great artistic things are left safely enshrined, mysterious yet not personally applicable. However, in the great "cathedral-like" space of the London Coliseum, and delivered in a passionately involving way, the questions that Bach posed demanded some kind of genuine answer.

It was a highly significant response to the end of the second millennium that both the National Gallery, with Neil MacGregor's exhibition Seeing Salvation, and the English National Opera just round the corner with Bach's St John Passion, should have chosen to present an explanation and a staging of religious questions at the very heart of the national artistic agenda.

Deborah Warner's production followed the precedent set by Jonathan Miller when he "semi-staged" the Matthew Passion at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street. Chorus and players were in modern dress. There was very little by way of decor - though Warner had some video effects on the backcloth. Pilate was first seen putting on his tie and jacket and straightening his clothes before he had to deal with the interruption and duty of examining Jesus. Peter's betrayal was indicated with a crowd gathered round some rostrums - no fire needed, because the fire in Peter's heart burnt so fiercely. The descriptive response Bach makes to this betrayal was delivered with devastating expressiveness by the singer Mark Padmore in the Evangelist's role.

Warner with the John Passion had a much tighter and more limited piece of Bible story to outline than Miller. The Matthew Passion includes the visually memorable Last Supper narrative, whereas the John is just the arrest, trial and crucifixion - with Jesus giving up the Spirit when he has completed the great task of human life.

The opera stage was able to both evoke the events and stage the suggested interior reaction to the narrative - as Bach so superlatively portrays possible responses in the heart-stopping arias. The tenor response to the scourging of Jesus is a text which, in English, has always been suppressed. Its pietistic imagery of Jesus's flayed flesh going directly to heaven to plead for our sinfulness, was too much for Victorian taste - and, even here in a new translation, the production baulked at the ideas in the original German. The scourging was barely physically represented. Faking it on stage would have been embarrassing, and the naked actor's back writhing gently was much criticised - as were the flowers laid at the end by individual chorus and cast members, while they sang the great lullaby with which Bach suggests the eternal divine reconciliation.

Was it an echo of Princess Di? I think it was not only that. It was individuals shown making their own response as best they could, singing their lines on the move all over the stage, not gathered in serried chorus ranks. As Christians our job is to respond alone, for the ultimate response must be individual.

That's the message and requirement of Easter for each one of us.

Graham Cowley reports on PASSION PLAY 2000 in Dulwich

Easter in Dulwich will never be the same. The culmination of more than a year's work, Passion Play 2000 took over the area for three days.

Eleven different events, in eleven different places, involving a local cast of 80 actors and a Millennium Passion Choir of another 80. The opening, on the evening of Maundy Thursday, as the choir sang the Last Supper episodes from Bach's St Matthew Passion while actors in biblical dress illustrated the story, had great beauty. Nothing, however, could have prepared the audience for the emotional impact of the Last Supper in the upper room of the Crown & Greyhound in Dulwich Village. Packed round Jesus and the disciples - now in modern dress and using modern language - the story was throat-catchingly immediate and many of the audience were in tears by the end of the short scene.

What made Passion Play 2000 different was a determination to tell the story of Jesus' death and resurrection as if it was happening now. Jesus' tormented anxiety in the Garden of Gethsemane was swiftly overtaken as he was besieged by a mob with torches led by uniformed military police, who dragged him away to be examined. Good Friday started with his Trial, where the audience was drawn into the battle of wills between Pilate and Caiaphas while Jesus, bloody from the police beatings, stood movingly aloof. He carried his cross to Golgotha in St Francis' Gardens outside Sainsbury's in Dog Kennel Hill. The unforgettable sight of three young men hanging in agony on the crosses and then taken down lifeless led to more tears from the hundreds watching.

That evening the Cross, still smeared with blood, was re-erected in St Barnabas' Church as the Choir sang Bach's version of Good Friday's events.

Before dawn on Easter Day, hundreds gathered in the garden outside St Stephen's Church by Dulwich Wood to see the final act. A despairing Mary Magdalene was greeted first by the Angel and then by her risen Lord, who appeared to the sound of the dawn chorus. St Stephen's dawn service was attended by so many that every service sheet was shared by two or three.

Passion Play 2000 was the inspiration of actress and director Tricia Thorns. The cast, led by John Lofthouse as Jesus, was drawn from the community of Dulwich, as was the army of helpers behind the scenes.

Dulwich will never forget it.

The Rev David Fudger reflects on the Greenwich Passion Play

Saved by the rain! Well we were - as thousands gathered in Greenwich Park on Good Friday for an outdoor performance of the Mystery plays. And it didn't rain - thank God!

During the three-hour event, seven short plays depicting seven miracle scenes from St John's Gospel were acted out. Each miracle was performed seven times, giving the audience the opportunity to move round the park and watch the different 'Christs' and their casts perform. After an interval, the cast and crew of nearly 1000 performed the final passion narrative and Ben Thomas, the only professional actor, played the final Jesus and was the only one brave enough to mount the 20 foot cross at Calvary! During the event live music ranged from steel drumming to gospel, rap to folk, with Jewish dancers and children's' music groups.

This was an ambitious production, put together by a brilliant director, John Doyle, who has in the past masterminded the York and Chester Mystery Plays; and Greenwich, Blackheath and Charlton Christian Alliance. But in the end everything depended on the weather. After 1000's of hours of practice time the event didn't have a dress rehearsal. It was just performed live - once! Afterwards people clamoured for a once a year production. If only! Next year we'll go back to our parishes and see if our portrayal of the Holy Week narrative could be even more imaginative, given our excursions this year.

As one of the 'Jesus' players, the event was a wonderful opportunity for proclamation of the last hours of Jesus' life. It was intensely moving, especially at the feet washing, and reminded me once again just what being part of the 'Body of Christ' was all about - given that at least half of the cast would not consider themselves to be Christian.

David Prothero of St Antony's, Hamsey Green looks back at A Very Private Passion

A Very Private Passion - a new play for Lent and Passiontide performed at various centres across the Diocese in April

So, you arrive and settle, maybe with your own private version of the Passiontide sequence, carefully stored in that section of your memory under 'What you think you know'.

You spend a challenging first half hour holding on to what you think you know before becoming unsettled, progressively challenged and not a little perplexed as you enter the world and minds of the Bermondsey Two, aka Swerve and Kai, as they are confronted by the enigmatic and ultra-challenging H.

You marvel at the simplicity and immediacy of Rebecca Lublinski's production of Michael Wicherek's new play before you slip into a phase of utter self-consciousness as you are catapulted into the meta-language and sub-cultural labyrinth and agony which passes for the inner urban torment of the Two. In turn they both present us with fast moving unfinished thoughts and unconsidered acts of aggression against the silent and seemingly passive presence of H.

Your memory struggles to download the orthodoxy of the Passion, only to be met by the blunt instrument of Swerve's frustrations and prejudices which are more than complemented by Kai's need to rationalise and move on.

By now you're screaming for help whilst at the same time sensing that there's a deeper meaning - somewhere. And as that Bermondsey night progresses you can just begin to sense a hint of emerging jumbled half meanings and maybes as you ponder and sift the machine gun dialogue. H's silence provoking the two Bermondsey Pilates to the twin points of exasperation and possible terminal violence; the dilemma of whether to love or be loved; the victory of ignorance over rationality; our ability to reject in favour of our preoccupation with our own pathetic existence. It's all there - somewhere.

The answer? Go home, sleep, wake, and pause to reflect deeply upon a near-life experience which has left you wanting to see it all over again, to replay and hit the pause button at your leisure.

And has it worked? Of course it has because each and every one of us has stopped our lives this Passiontide, and contemplated upon the power of silent weakness, and our knowledge that we're loved by a personal and waiting God.