Adam Spiegel
presents
The Wilton's Music Hall production of
Yiimimangaliso
"The Mysteries"
REVIEWS
What's On - Wednesday 6th March 2002
The Mysteries
Queen's Theatre

Like the Greek tragedies, the English medieval Mystery plays provide a kind of elemental theatre that speaks for all people and all time. This back-to-basics version, cross-culturally pollinated by the unique energy and bare boards passion of a huge company from South Africa, confirms the enduring universality of these plays. But it also relishes in the particular, too, of that country's incredible diversity to provide something truly distinctive and distinguished.

Told in multiple African languages, with Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans freely exchanged and combined with English, it's good that we know these biblical stories already, since it might otherwise not be the easiest thing to follow. (To misquote a Cole Porter lyric from another current London hit, Kiss Me Kate, you might be advised to 'Brush up your scriptures, start quoting them now'). But the joy of this enterprise is to see these familiar tales - from Adam and Eve to the Crucifixion - so beautifully distilled through the eyes of a totally different culture.

This production, simply staged on a raked wooden stage that is mostly bare except for a few scaffolding poles and a ramp projecting into the stalls, has a naked simplicity that honours the origins of the Mystery plays themselves, which were originally a kind of medieval street theatre.

Taken indoors to the musty, humid confines of a shabby West End theatre is itself a vibrant act of reclamation for one of London's least lovely venues. Transferring here after a sell-out run at Wilton's Music Hall last summer - where the room was equal to the show in terms of atmosphere - it's a double triumph to see it look so good here. It's also incredible to see a cast of no less than 40 people populating a stage in this way. Even more remarkable is the complete commitment, integrity and gusto with which they perform.

The show, conceived and created by director Mark Dornford-May and musical director Charles Hazlewood, is at times theatrically naive, but that, too, is part of its charm and sincerity. It may be a world away from the rather more sophisticated memory of Bill Bryden's three-part Yorkshire version of The Mysteries that remains one of the landmarks of the National Theatre's last 25 years. But it is completely entrancing on its own terms.
MARK SHENTON
Money Week - Friday 8th March 2002

This unorthodox production of the 14th-century Chester Miracle Plays is "one of the most moving, beautiful, humane and courageous shows you will ever see in the West End", said Charles Spencer in The Daily Telegraph. It is performed in four languages (English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu) and acted by a predominantly amateur cast recruited from South African townships, who sing, dance and narrate their way through Bible stories from the Creation to the Resurrection. The story-telling, in spite of the linguistic variety, is "always clear", said Benedict Nightingale in The Times. Indeed, there's nothing "fussy or pretentious" in the performance: the cast beat oil drums and dustbins and the manger is represented by a hay bale. The Sunday Times's John Peter was awed. "Nothing," he said, "quite prepared me for the sheer, generous, magnificent exuberance of this show."
Jewish Chronicle - Friday 8th March 2002

The transfer of The Mysteries from the Wilton's Music Hall in East London to the Queen's Theatre in the West End is one of those rare triumphs that could have easily ended up as an unmitigated disaster.

It was remarkable enough that this wonderfully talented cast, drawn largely from South Africa's deprived townships, has so movingly and skilfully revived the Chester Mystery Plays. That they have taken to the West End as if born to it will surely be the theatrical story of the year.

Biblical stories, including some from the New Testament, are retold with a simplicity and a life-enhancing enthusiasm. The music is played on instruments no more complicated than rice-filled plastic bottles and upturned dustbins, backed up by some of the most beautiful voices to be found on a London stage.

Mark Dornford-May and Charles Hazlewood have found such a wealth of South African talent that any producer wishing to stage a future West End production would be mad not to hold auditions in the wasteland outside Cape Town.

So many South African shows that have landed on these shores are understandably steeped in their apartheid history, but in harking back to the Bible, this production comes up with the most optimistic signal for South Africa's multi-racial and multi-lingual future.

The cast of 40 is too numerous to mention, but Sibusiso "Otto" Ziqubu is a comic and exuberant Noah and Ruby Mthethwa as his wife and, later as Mary Magdalene, has a voice that could grace Covent Garden.
Time Out - March 6th. 2002
'The Mysteries' Queen's Theatre
The medieval Mystery plays were a way of teaching the Biblical stories to a population that couldn't read. They were performed by and for a community that believed in heaven and hell. It's a long jump from there to the entertainment values of London's godless West End today, and yet Mark Dornford-May and Charles Hazlewood's production is a rousing piece of raw, vital theatre, transposing the stories from medieval Chester to today's South Africa and creating a similar sense of community across remarkably diverse boundaries.

On a stark stage, the cast of 40 easily shift from words to song, drawing on four of South Africa's 11 languages, including the distinctive clicking of Xhosa (sometimes it's fortunate that the stories are so familiar). Earth, air, fire and water are created to the sound of the beating of oil drums and the shaking of bottles of sand. The settings invite the audience to use its imagination: the building of Noah's Ark is conjured with a piece of folding fencing; Bethlehem with a bale of hay. The stories may be old but there are plenty of contemporary references in the sjamboks wielded by Herod's thugs and in the tyres that the crowd threaten to place over the adulteress's neck. Most of all, the a cappella singing is sensational. What a shame that South Africa itself has been grudging in its support of this outstanding company. The ten commandments have acquired an eleventh - Thou shalt go to 'The Mysteries'. Now.
Jane Edwardes
The Stage - 7th March 2002
Queen's
The Mysteries

First seen last year at Wilton's Music Hall, this creation by Mark Dornford-May and Charles Hazlewood transposes the Chester Mystery Plays to an African setting and idiom. With a large multi-racial and pan-African cast, the biblical story is performed in at least a half-dozen languages, of which English is not always the most intelligible.

In the pattern of other modern productions, Act I races through Genesis, from Creation through Noah to Abraham and Isaac, leaving the second half for Jesus' story. The homey, folk tale quality of the original text is retained through the use of various African styles of music, dress and characterisation. An opening heavenly chorus of Deus Gloria transmutes into a traditional African song, while Noah and his family celebrate the end of their ordeal with a chorus of You Are My Sunshine and Christ's Nativity occasions a raucous township-style party.

Characters are also built on familiar contemporary types. Noah is a simple country farmer, Lucifer a swaggering leather-clad biker, Herod's army become modern terror police, and Pilate is a European governor. Standing out in the large cast are Vumile Nomanyama doubling as a stern but paternal God and a calmly self-contained Jesus, Andries Mbali as an alternately comic and menacing Lucifer and Pauline Malefane as an operatic-voiced Mary.

Questions of taste are raised by the faux naif style, which implicitly invites us to adopt a patronising superiority toward the simple faith of the Africans who understand the Bible in terms of their own world. Those who are not troubled by this will find much to enjoy in the colourful and musical production and perhaps some inspiration in the religious pageantry.
Gerald Berkowitz
Sunday Times - 3rd March 2002
The Mysteries - Queen's
Nothing quite prepared me for the sheer, generous, magnificent exuberance of this show. This is an edited version of the medieval English Mystery cycles, performed in Xhosa, Zulu, Afrikaans and English, with music, mostly vocal, by a mixed-race, mostly black cast. It is completely faithful to the spirit of its original: it has irresistible energy, unforced piety, a fervent, majestic sense of divine revelation and a warm, earthy humour. It is naif the way Duccio's paintings are naif. Behind the simplicity and directness of feelings, a deeply sophisticated imagination is at work. The theology is eloquent, too. The Abraham and Isaac episode leads straight into the Annunciation: as Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, so God is ready to sacrifice His own. The vigorous African dance by Jesus and his disciples is unforgettable: a celebration, like the whole joyous performance.
The Mail on Sunday- 3rd. March 2002
For real heart, and a genuine shot of culture in the rump, turn to Mark Dornford-May's South African staging of The Mysteries. How strange and exhilarating to see these ancient little plays, given new vigour by this tribal telling, in the West End. It's impossible to ignore the sharp satire. On a stage that looks as if it's been furnished by Steptoe and Son, a cast in traditional dress and township rags thump upturned dustbins and sing with a grace and feeling that bring a lump to the throat. It might be theatre in the raw, but this wonderful production, which started life in Wilton's Music Hall in the East End, is presented with a panache and skill that most of our national companies can only dream about. It is the kind of theatre that Peter Brook has spent most of his life trying to achieve.

Dornford-May gives us an object lesson in how to command a stage. There are some wonderfully batty contortions from Andries Mbali as Lucifer, and classic Yul Brynner posturing by Vumile Nomanyama as God.

The fact that I couldn't understand a damn word of Xhosa, Afrikaans or Zulu barely dented my enjoyment. Why that should be is no mystery. Dornford-May has done an extraordinary job by finding a thread to the tales which he strings together like beads. The hair-raising music does the rest
The Independent on Sunday - 3rd. March 2002
The critics - Theatre - Kate Bassett
The Mysteries are more electrifying and experimental, transferring to Shaftesbury Avenue from Wilton's Music Hall. The city of Chester's medieval cycle dramatises Bible stories from the Creation and Adam and Eve, through Christ's life to his Resurrection. Under director Mark Dornford-May, the text is reworked by a 40-strong, fantastically choiring, drumming and dancing cast of South African actors - in tribal and modern dress. The set is just sloping planks, scaffolding, and a few beer crates for God's throne.

This show gets off to a wobbly start. It's hard to decipher what in heaven's name the Lord and his archangels are saying when they kick off in English, and some of the acting is distinctly amateur. Nevertheless, when the company slip into their native languages of Xhosa, Zulu and Afrikaans they can be mesmerising. Vumile Nomanyama's God awesomely eludes our understanding with his clicking, reverberating pronouncements. He is, conversely, close to mankind in scenes of carnivalesque rejoicing. After the flood recedes, he beams and accompanies the carousing Noahs by clinking a beer bottle. The covenant between actor and audience is equally delightful. Noah only has to unfold some trellis fencing and, miraculously, we believe it's a water-tight Ark. This production is full of inspired theatrical shorthand. Simultaneously, a layer of meaning is added as the Testaments are used to make reference to the history of Africa. Herod is a black military dictator and Pontius Pilate a British governor. Nomanyama's Jesus, crucified in jeans, is a social as well as spiritual revolutionary. And when his township followers dance with him in the streets of heaven, it's as much about attaining a happier world here and now.
The Sunday Telegraph - 3rd. March 2002
Theatre - John Gross
By now almost everyone interested in the theatre must have heard of The Mysteries, the remarkable South African reworking of the medieval Chester mystery plays which was first seen at Wilton's Music Hall last summer, and which is now at the Queen's Theatre. It must also be clear from what has been written about it that it is a remarkable event.

The one danger is that people who haven't seen it could be led to suppose that it is a little too virtuous, both in modern terms (it's multicultural) and traditional ones. You are tempted to stress that in fact it is often funny, irreverent and unashamedly entertaining. But it would be wrong to put those aspects first. Valuable though they are, the show depends for its special power on a radiant faith. How far the actors involved (many of them amateurs) are practising Christians I have no idea. But they plainly believe passionately in what they are doing on stage.

We begin with the early chapters of Genesis, and then switch straight from the sacrifice of Isaac (often taken as prefiguring the sacrifice of Jesus) to the Gospel story.

The narrative is accompanied by songs that range from tribal chants to medieval hymns (with You are my Sunshine to signal the end of the Flood), and by extraordinarily expressive dances (especially when the apostles slap their knees and thighs in unison). Oil drums and plastic dustbin lids serve as percussion instruments; a bale of hay does duty for the manger; the cross is improvised out of a pair of ladders. Amid the homely detail, you get a sense of universality from multi lingual dialogue: characters address one another in Zulu, English, Xhosa and Afrikaans. The production is multi-costumed, too. Herod is a scarlet-robed chieftain and Pilate a beribboned admiral. The devils sport the kind of horns you can buy in a joke shop, and Jesus dies wearing a crown of thorns and blue jeans. There are momentary groupings - when the three kings arrive, for instance - that recall Old Master paintings.

While the show (directed by Mark Dornford-May) is very much a collective achievement, a few performances stand out. Andries Mbali is an agile and hyperactive Satan. Sibusiso "Otto" Ziqubu gets in some splendid clowning as Noah. Above all Vumile Nomanyama is superb (but then nothing less is called for) doubling as God and Jesus. His calm authority would be enough to qualify him as a great actor; so would his groans from the cross.

One reservation. At the risk of playing the serpent in Eden, I must report that I found something had been lost in the move from Wilton's to the West End - a certain intimacy, a sense of sharing. But the show still offers a tremendous experience.
The Observer - Sunday 3rd. March 2002
THEATRE - Susannah Clapp
The Mysteries Queen's, London W1
YOU MIGHT call it a miracle. The Mysteries have appeared in the West End. This wonderful South African version of medieval Bible stories, first seen in the East End at Wilton's Music Hall, is vaulting, serious, humorous and complete. It harmonises a great Babel of languages, performed in Xhosa, Latin, Zulu, Afrikaans and English. It fuses the modern and the medieval. Its finger-clicking, palm-slapping music whips up a busy world of trilling birds and murmuring winds. It's almost enough to make you believe in an all-seeing creator.
The Mail on Sunday - March 3rd. 2002
For real heart, and a genuine shot of culture in the rump, turn to Mark Dornford-May's South African staging of The Mysteries. How strange and exhilarating to see these ancient little plays, given new vigour by this tribal telling, in the West End. It's impossible to ignore the sharp satire. On a stage that looks as if it's been furnished by Steptoe and Son, a cast in traditional dress and township rags thump upturned dustbins and sing with a grace and feeling that bring a lump to the throat. It might be theatre in the raw, but this wonderful production, which started life in Wilton's Music Hall in the East End, is presented with a panache and skill that most of our national companies can only dream about. It is the kind of theatre that Peter Brook has spent most of his life trying to achieve.

Dornford-May gives us an object lesson in how to command a stage. There are some wonderfully batty contortions from Andries Mbali as Lucifer, and classic Yul Brynner posturing by Vumile Nomanyama as God.

The fact that I couldn't understand a damn word of Xhosa, Afrikaans or Zulu barely dented my enjoyment. Why that should be is no mystery. Dornford-May has done an extraordinary job by finding a thread to the tales which he strings together like beads. The hair-raising music does the rest.
METRO Thursday 28th. February 2002
FOOT-STOMPINGLY DIVINE
THEATRE REVIEW|
Yiimimangaliso: The Mysteries ****
The Chester Mystery Plays devised to share Christianity's message with the illiterate masses are retold here by a 40-strong multi-racial cast of South Africans and, as they charge through everything from the Creation to the Resurrection with a populist mixture of song, dance and jokes - and in a variety of languages - you'll have to be pretty determined not to be swept along with them.

A large part of the appeal of this performance is the cheeky sense of humour employed throughout: the angels wear winged helmets and have ANGEL studded in sequins on the back of their boiler suits; an imposing God (Vumile Nomanyama) still manages to show off a winning hip wiggle; Lucifer (Andries Mbali) slides around the stage clad in red leather; and Sibusiso 'Otto' Zaqubu's performance as Noah is a comic tour de force. And there's the rough (and often ingenious) simplicity: Bethlehem is a straw bale; God's message is a dance step and a tin whistle tune that Jesus (Nomanyama again) teaches his disciples; and the celebratory township jives are believably spontaneous. If all that fails to grab you, the decibel level won't: everything is presented in a teeth-rattling volume, from the astonishing vocal power of all the singers (and especially Pauline Malefane as the Virgin Mary), through the enthusiastic drum-banging and metal sheet-rattling of the scrapyard percussion to the chilling metallic clangs which resound through the theatre as Christ's crucifixion nails are hammered in.
Siobhán Murphy
Until April 6, Queen's Theatre
52, Shaftesbury Avenue W1
Tue to Sat 7.30 p.m. Wed and Sat mats 3 p.m. £12.50 to £35
Tel: 020-7494-5040
Tube: Piccadilly Circus
Times photo THE TIMES - Wednesday February 27th. 2002
WEST END ERUPTS WITH JOY AT GIFT FROM AFRICA
The Mysteries
Queen's, Shaftesbury Avenue
Benedict Nightingale
IN New York standing ovations have become as ordinary as hot dogs, but in the rigorous English capital you seldom see an entire audience leap to its feet in an unabashed display of collective joy. Last night it happened. On stage, a 40-person cast comprising people in township clothes and tribal dress, grandees and riot police, Pilate in an admiral's uniform and a beaming God in a rain-bow skirt produced chants that seemed to come partly from an African village, partly from a Pentecostal church, partly from a medieval cathedral: how could we not reward generosity with generosity? The Mysteries is as improbable a cultural event as a coupling between a young lynx and an antique tortoise would be a biological one. It's a South African adaptation of the 14th -century Chester Miracle Plays in four languages (English, Afrikaans, Xhosa, Zulu) and in every skin colour known to apartheid. It begins with the Creation and takes us to the Resurrection and beyond. It's a celebration of healing, whole-ness, togetherness: South African, human, universal.

If it's an act of faith in a cosmic order that even Andries Mbala's slithering, red-clad Sa-tan can't undermine, it's also a statement of belief in the power of rough theatre. The decor mainly consists of metal oil-drums and plastic dustbins upon which actors pound. There are milk crates, garden lattice, a bale of hay for Jesus's manger, but there's nothing fussy or pretentious. It's forum enough for songs ancient and modern, dancing exuberant and menacing, and story-telling that, despite the linguistic variety, is always clear.

Some events are humorous - Noah as a fat, flustered ten-ant-farmer chasing his chickens aboard an ark helpfully marked "ark" - but many more wrench the heart. It could have been merely naff when Ham, Shem et al burst into You Are My Sunshine after the dove has brought them its olive branch: in fact, the familiar lines brim with gratitude, relief and hope. The Annuncia-tion, with Pauline Malefane's wide-faced Mary - looking gently up from her washing, is extraordinarily moving. So is the growing of Jesus into Jesus: a moment signalled by his dancing of the tiny dance his mother has taught him, his playing of a tune on a penny whistle.

And so is a tearfulness on the Cross that seems more awful because of the gritty strength of Vumile Nomanyama, who plays not only Jesus but God. This actor has the gift of stillness and uses it to huge effect throughout Mark Dornford-May's production. His Christ has a quiet, concentrated authority and his God a burning yet equally unforced intensity. He's tough, even severe, and he cares.

I didn't see The Mysteries when they passed through Wapping's Wilton's Music Hall last year, and I wondered if the transfer to a West End theatre might not diminish the show's reputed freshness, point up its crudeness, or both. I needn't have worried. My col-league Richard Morrison reported then that the piece "blew me out of my socks". I, too, am in orbit.
Queen's Theatre; 0870-890-1110
Telegraph photo The Daily Telegraph - Wednesday February 27th. 2002
THIS SHOW WILL FILL A HOLE IN YOUR SOUL
The Mysteries
QUEENS THEATRE
MAKE no mistake. This is one of the most moving, beautiful, humane and courageous shows you will ever see in the West End.

At a time of declining faith and institutionalised cynicism, the churches should be bussing congregations into Shaftesbury Avenue, but you don't need to be a Christian to be bowled over by The Mysteries. It is one of those rare theatrical events that will fill a hole in anyone's soul.

The show's creators, Mark Dornford-May and Charles Hazlewood, travelled to South Africa to recruit the cast. Most of the 40-strong multi-racial company are amateurs, and many come from deprived backgrounds In the townships, but you would never guess. The acting has a grandeur and simplicity, the music a swelling beauty, the dancing a breathtaking vitality, which are all overwhelming in their effect.
The production was first seen last year in the ghostly, semi-derelict Wilton's Music Hall in the East End, and my big fear was that the show would seem diminished when uprooted from such atmospheric surroundings.

If anything, though, The Mysteries seems even stronger the second time around, and there is something thrilling about seeing such a heartfelt, defiantly uncommercial production in the gilded splendour of the West End.

The medieval mystery plays aren't only the first English plays, they are also the first great example of popular culture in our history. Accessible, funny and deeply touching, they brought the Bible story to the illiterate masses with a mixture of awe, reverence and beguiling homeliness and humour. It is these qualities that are so marvellously captured in this production which is full of joy, pain and spirituality. The company perform in four main languages - Afrikaans, English, Xhosa and Zulu, but the language doesn't matter because the story is so familiar and the acting so expressive.

The music is a mixture of tribal chants and hymns, township jive and even an ecstatic rendering of the Morecambe and Wise favourite, Bring Me Sunshine, performed, to hilarious effect, after the Flood. The voices, both massed and solo, are wonderfully rich, spontaneous and heartfelt, and are accompanied by a percussive score bashed out on plastic dustbins, oil drums and sheets of scrap metal. This may sound daunting. I can only assure you that the effect, under Hazlewood's musical direction, is glorious. Dornford-May directs his vast company with precision and panache, using many of the techniques of rough theatre. A single bale of hay represents the stable in Bethlehem, the Flood is signalled by pouring a watering can into a washing up bowl while the cast brilliantly mimic the sounds of the animals aboard the ark.

Yet the effect is never cutesy and the Crucifixion, accompanied by great metallic bangs and blinding flashes of light as the nails are driven home, is almost unbearable to watch. This scene, and the earlier sequence in which Abraham comes within an ace of killing his beloved Isaac on the capricious command of God, serve as a stark reminder of the cruelty that lies at the very heart of the Christian faith.

This is an ensemble show, but there are tremendous individual performances. Vumile Nomanyama doubles as an awesomely authoritative God and a movingly human Jesus, making the mystery of the incarnation breathtakingly explicit; Sibusiso "Otto" Ziqubu is a hilariously obese and hen-pecked Noah while Pauline Malefane shines as a radiant Mary, blessed with the voice of an angel.

I will be astonished if the West End sees a finer production this year.
Tickets: 020 7494 5040
Charles Spencer
Standard photo Evening Standard - Wednesday, 27th. February 2002
NO MYSTERY THAT THIS SHOW LIGHTS UP THE WEST END
First Night by Nicholas de Jongh
The Mysteries - Queens Theatre
NOT since Samuel Beckett's Endgame, in which trash-cans served as home for a couple of pensioners, have dustbins made such a shattering impression upon the English stage as they did last night. But in The Mysteries, the plastic dustbins, in harmony with a collection of oil-drums and other scrapyard junk, serve no grim purpose. They are employed as makeshift musical instruments to provide an eloquent, percussive accompaniment to this exhilarating South African version of the Chester cycle of Mystery plays. These Mysteries are, of course, only mysterious in the spiritual sense, since they consist of medieval adaptations of the Old and New Testament. A fine, multi-racial cast of 40, speaking variously in English, Afrikaans. Xhosa and Zulu, impart a hypnotic strangeness and power to these familiar Bible stories. Chanting, dancing, singing old hymns and carols, these actors give the old Mysteries fresh dramatic life. Yet there's no whiff of pious evangelism about this production, which premiered in Cape Town and triumphed last year at Wilton's Music Hall. It's the creative brainchild of Mark Dornford-May, who directs, and Charles Hazlewood, who is responsible for the music. They stamp The Mysteries with the dynamic force of a vibrant, foreign culture.

The setting by Dornford-May himself and Dan Watkins is simplicity itself. The stage is bare and impoverished. It's bounded by scaffolding, corrugated iron at the rear, with a ramp thrusting into the audience. The huge oil-drums and dustbin lids are played by musicians crouching in theatre boxes and sitting side-stage. On to this empty, steeply raked stage, strolls God himself, in the handsome, sculpted shape of Vumile Nomanyama. The drums strike up a tremendous bulletin of sound to celebrate the dawning of creation. At first, it's rather hard to follow the flow, since much of the dialogue is in one or other foreign language. Yet this does not matter that much, even though the alliterative, original text is seductive to ear and mind. The dramatised Bible accounts are sufficiently well-known to enable you to catch the general drift. And what an alluring drift it is. Each inventive, vivid scene is charged with the novelty of Dornford-May's witty ideas while the passionate singing and dancing serve as accompaniment. Once the endless rain stops, the inhabitants of the Ark break into a clamorous "You Are My Sunshine."

If the staging is minimal, the impact is maximum. Nomanyama, in short blue jeans, affectingly plays a vulnerable Jesus who struggles to master the tin whistle and the dance that define his creed. He ends crucified on two intertwined ladders. The screeching roar of percussion as the nails are drilled into his flesh chills to the bone. Contemporary politics casts a sinister glow too. Herman Hardick's hand-washing Pontius Pilate is white and Jesus is menaced by violent black, security police. But the exultant singing finale, greeted with a standing ovation, powerfully suggests how faith survives after the Messiah is dead. These Mysteries light up the West End.
Guardian photo The Guardian - Wednesday February 27th. 2002
Reviews MESMERISING APPROACH TO MYSTERY PLAYS
Theatre
The Mysteries - Queen's Theatre, London
*****
Some shows shrink on a second viewing. This dazzling South African version of the medieval Chester mystery plays, seen briefly at Wilton's Music Hall last summer, works just as magically in the West End. Not only has the cast, now totalling 40, virtually doubled but the spectacle expands to fill the space.

But why at the end did the audience leap to its feet? Was it simply a gesture of liberal piety? I don't think so. For a start I believe the audience is responding to the power of the original plays and their retelling of the Christian story from the creation to the crucifixion and resurrection. Even in a secular age, we find a mythical resonance in the account of Cain's fratricide, of Noah's comically recalcitrant wife, of Abraham's readiness to sacrifice his son and in the New Testament story of betrayal, redemption and rebirth.

The show appeals to ancestral Christian memory. But we are also reacting to the rich inventiveness of this version created by Mark Dornford-May and Charles Hazlewood and performed in English, Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu. The linguistic cocktail, in fact, becomes a vital part of the overall meaning. Herman Hardick's white Pilate interrogates Vumile Nomanyama's black Christ in English: Christ's response comes in his own tongue which immediately sets up racial and cultural differences and turns him from a divinity into a political symbol of persecuted peoples everywhere.

But the style of the production instantly engages rather than alienates. Nomanyama transforms himself from Deus to Jesus by the simple device of stripping off a coloured robe and revealing a pair of blue jeans. His disciples register their shared faith by an extraordinary knee-and-thigh slapping dance. A bale of straw stand for Bethlehem. And, back in the Old Testament, a re-tractable picket fence symbolises Noah's Ark and a cascading water sprinkler the flood. In short, the production enlists our imagination rather than pre-empting it.

Charles Hazlewood's musical direction and Joel Mthethwa's choreography also turn this into a piece of total theatre in which speech, song and dance harmoniously unite. The cast beat upturned dustbins and oil-drums attached to the boxes. Jesus attracts his followers with a recorder. The post-flood happiness is evoked through You Are My Sunshine and the a cappella choruses raise the roof. But like the performances, which include a scarlet-suited Lucifer from Andries Mbali and a moving Mary Magdalene from Ruby Mthethwa, everything is put to the service of an idea: a re-telling of the Christian story in terms of a modern South Africa facing its own desire for truth and reconciliation.
Michael Billington
Box Office 0870 890 1110

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