This drama moves heaven and earth

UNDER a canvas roof that patters with steady drops of rain, a troupe of angels are dancing. Make that nine orders of angels, because that is what God has just created.

They are whirling like dervishes from the sheer joy of being alive, arms aloft, bodies moving gracefully.

In their midst stand two figures, awful in their might and glory. One is God, who has just brought about this wonder of creation. The other is the mightiest of his archangels, Lucifer, the bearer of light.

And yet already, all is not quite well in heaven. Lucifer is a little too proud in his greatness, as the angels dance around him to the strains of heavenly music.

“The beams of my brighthood are beaming so bright, and so seemly in sight myself I now see, like a lord am I lifted to live in this light!” he declaims, drunk on the glory of it all.

The angel Gabriel is just about to speak up when someone more powerful than all of them raises his hand.

“Stop there! Stop there!” barks York Theatre Royal artistic director Damian Cruden. The whirling angels stutter to a halt; the music dies; even God and Lucifer turn obediently to listen.

Welcome to rehearsals for the York Mystery Plays. In just over two weeks time, the greatest story ever told returns to the Museum Gardens for the first time since 1988, in what is set to be one of the cultural highlights of the summer.

More than 500 actors are involved in the plays – two complete casts, the ‘carpenters’ and the ‘potters’, who will perform on alternate days – as well as a choir.

Then there are the hosts of backstage people – costume designers, stage hands, front-of-house. In all, about 1,700 people will be involved in the staging of the plays – the vast majority of them amateurs doing it for nothing more than the sheer joy of being involved.

This soggy Monday night is the first time all the members of the ‘potter’ cast have been brought together to rehearse as one in this giant marquee in the Museum Gardens.

It is raining, and the specially constructed pathway leading to the marquee from Marygate is muddy. Inside the tent, however, all that is forgotten. There is a buzz of genuine excitement, and the sense that – under the professional guidance of directors Cruden and Riding Lights’ Paul Burbridge, and the choreography of Lesley Ann Eden – everything is beginning to come together.

The cast – including professional actors Ferdinand Kingsley as God and former Coronation Street villain Graeme Hawley as Lucifer – have just, for the first time, heard the choir sing the music composed by Christopher Madin. There is a burst of applause as the last haunting notes die away. The atmosphere is electric.

For retired chemical engineer Rod Leonard, this will be the first time he has trod a stage since taking part in a school production at the age of eight. He can’t even remember what the school play was that he took part in back then. His was only a small part. “I pulled the corpses off the stage.”

It is a small part this time, too. He and his wife Margaret are extras. They get to do a bit of gardening in the Garden of Eden; watch Eve eat the apple of temptation; and form part of a quarrelling mob as humanity, under the malign influence of Lucifer, ‘go to the dogs’.

Then God sends his flood to cleanse the world: at which point Margaret and Rod don blue ponchos to take the part of waves in Noah’s flood. “We have to drown children,” says Rod with a grin. “It’s great fun!”

There is plenty of mayhem, murder and sheer, bloody cruelty in the story told by the Mystery Plays.

In a sense, they tell the story of all things, says producer Liam Evans Ford, one of the comparatively small number of professionals involved. The story begins with God’s creation of the angels and of the firmament; moves quickly to the fall of Lucifer; and then to the tempting of Eve by Lucifer in the Garden of Eden.

As the malign influence of Lucifer on mankind grows, we see humanity ‘go to the dogs’, and God cleanse the earth with a great flood. He then decides that the only way to save his creatures is to come to earth in fleshly form, as Jesus.

The plays are partly about God’s journey of realisation about what he has created, says Liam; partly about the struggle between good and evil; and partly about mankind’s own struggle.

You don’t get stories much bigger than that. At times, it can be quite painful, admits 57-year-old Ali Ravenhall, a York College lecturer with a non-speaking part. “I’m one of the women in the slaughter of the innocents. We have our babies killed. It really is quite upsetting.”

And yet thrilling, too. Everybody, however small their part, is involved in a number of scenes. There is a real sense of people working and pulling together, she says. “I’m just really excited. It’s going to be fantastic!”

Ali’s husband Tony, the head of performing arts at York College, agrees. He takes on the role of Joseph, one of the bigger parts. And even though he has a background in professional theatre, he admits taking to the stage again as an actor is proving quite daunting. “My students can see me actually doing it as well as teaching it!”

But it is great fun, he says – even though, as a director himself, he occasionally finds himself biting his tongue. “I do find myself thinking ‘I wouldn’t do it like that’.”

People sometimes ask him why he’s got involved, he says. He has a simple answer. “Why wouldn’t you? They’re a part of York – and having lived here for 25 years, I’m a part of York.”

One of the great things about the production is the age range of those taking part, from a three-year-old toddler to people in their late 70s.

One of the younger performers is 17-year-old Rob Paterson, a York College student. He plays the part of a soldier: not a big part, but he’s never made to feel that way.

“It feels as though everybody is working together,” he says. “It’s a real community thing. I may never be involved in anything like this again. It’s just a great opportunity to do something special.”

• York Mystery plays, St Mary’s Abbey, Museum Gardens, August 2 – 27. Tuesday – Sunday 7.30pm, with a Saturday matinee at 2.30pm. Tickets £12 to £42 from 01904 623568. Family tickets and group discounts are available. For more information visit yorkmysteryplays2012.com

Fact file...

The Mystery Plays are a medieval tradition in York that dates back hundreds of years. They are known to have been performed as early as 1376, although there are references to even earlier religious performances.

The plays were both a way of bringing Christian messages to the people of medieval York – but also a great day out. In the course of one day, 48 individual plays would be performed, starting at 4.30am with parades through the streets on wagons. Actors went on to present the great moments from the Bible at 12 locations on York’s streets, each marked by city banners.

The word ‘mystery’ probably comes from the Latin ‘ministerium’. In medieval English this meant a ‘trade’ or ‘craft’. Craftsmen’s guilds (who performed the plays) were often referred to as ‘mysteries’ – although the word also refers to a religious truth or rite.

The first list of the Mystery Plays was drawn up by civic official Roger Burton in 1415. He named 51 plays; but the first text of the plays, from around 1430-1440, includes only 48, written in the “colourful language of medieval Yorkshire”.

The plays were suppressed in 1569 following the Reformation, but were revived in 1951 when they were performed to 26,000 people in the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey.

The complete cycle of York Mystery Plays would run to something like 24 hours. For this 2012 production in Museum Gardens being staged to commemorate the 800th anniversary of York gaining its city charter, York writer Mike Kenny – who adapted The Railway Children for the Olivier award-winning production by York Theatre Royal and the National Railway Museum – has been commissioned to script a version that last about three hours, but which cover all the essential parts of the story.

Three covered stands are being erected in Museum Gardens: so the audience of up to 1,400 will be protected from the worst of the weather.