Religious Studies
‘The Mysteries’ originated 700 years ago in Chester when medieval guilds came together at the feast of Corpus Christi and staged Bible stories (from creation to resurrection) on the back of carts. On Wednesday 23rd September our Year 13 RS class joined in this tradition when we went to see a performance of ‘The Mysteries’ at the Garrick Theatre. The version we went to see was undeniably different from the original performances. It was produced by Isango Portobello, a South African theatre company, and performed in a mixture of Medieval English, Xhosa, Tswana, Afrikaans and Zulu. Despite this language barrier, everyone enjoyed the production, as the powerful acting and enthusiastic dancing and singing made it a fabulous evening. The set created the Khayelitsha township, “a seemingly endless sprawl of tin huts”, in Cape Town from which the cast were drawn. The sides of the stage were enclosed in half-finished walls of corrugated tin and scaffolding, the raked stage looked like weather-beaten wood and there was a gangway leading into the stalls a few feet away from where we were sitting. As the cast pounded on a mixture of oil drums and dustbins, you felt that it really was being improvised in this setting.
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The costumes were a vibrant mix of traditional African outfits and modern clothes, for example Herod was dressed like an African warlord and was followed by black-outfitted machine-gun wielding guards in a sinister Murder of the Innocents. But while the set and costumes were a vital part of the production it was the music that really made it, as soon as God stepped onstage and sang her first song the audience knew they were in for a treat. While the whole production was special, it is impossible to go without the almost camp, huge Noah dressed in a one-piece stripy suit who prancing around the stage and was too hilarious for words; even as RS students we never knew the Bible could be so much fun. Indeed, the performance proved a great way to revise the crucial points of the Old and New Testament and everyone recognised the passages that we had been studying earlier that day. And little touches, such as wine glasses being used to create a ringing sound at Jesus crucifixion, carried more weight for us who understood the, in this case blood and wine, symbolism. All in all, The Mysteries was surely an enjoyable evening for anyone in the theatre (including the cast), but for those of us studying RS it was an even better way to start the school year.
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Hayley Flood, Year 13
