London.
TEMPLE
by Steve Waters.
Donmar Warehouse 41 Earlham Street WC2H 9LX To 25 July 2015.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm (sold out).
Runs: 1hr 40min No interval.
TICKETS: 0844 871 7624.
www.donmarwarehouse.com
Review: Carole Woddis 12 June:
Unholy goings-on amount to little.
Well, this isn’t at all what I was expecting from Steve Waters, whose The Contingency Plan, about global warming, remains one of the most cogent and dramatically realised responses to environmental issues.
Temple takes us back to the occupation of St Paul’s Churchyard in 2011 by the anti-capitalist Occupy London movement. The site and the issues pitted Anglicanism’s most iconic national church against calls for economic and global reform. How would the Church, whose credo was built on giving succour to the poorest, respond?
In the event, not well. But against expectation Waters looks with a not unkindly eye on its moral and spiritual dilemmas, in particular at The Dean of St Paul’s (named only as The Dean), and on the whole gives him the benefit of the doubt.
Played by Simon Russell Beale with typical persuasion, it’s hard not to find one’s sympathies swinging towards a man criticised for lack of spiritual leadership on the one hand, threatened on the other by the forces of capitalism in the shape of a snappily dressed female lawyer from the City of London Corporation, who finds himself failing, although later referred to as `the rock’ of the institution.
But it’s symptomatic of Temple’s confusing stance that this is less an exploration of the political and economic arguments raging between protesters and the capitalist Establishment than matters spiritual and temporal, conscience and faith – the arguments for the protestors unsatisfactorily being put at second-hand through the mouthpiece of the Dean’s temporary PA, the quirky, eccentric Lizzie.
Even Giles Fraser, the Canon Chancellor who resigned over the issue is represented here as opportunist and reluctant rebel rather than principled advocate. But then, in a careful caveat, we’re told the play is a fictional account only `inspired’ by those events.
Apart from the Dean, Waters’ surrounding figures remain sketchily emblematic and it’s left to the wonderful Anna Calder-Marshall as the Church Verger and Malcolm Sinclair as the Bishop of London (another surprisingly sympathetic portrayal of a far from sympathetic figure) to provide additional, sardonic if peripheral ballast.
Ultimately, Temple turns out disappointing, if momentarily entertaining.
The PA: Rebecca Humphries.
The Dean: Simon Russell Beale.
The Canon Chancellor: Paul Higgins.
The Verger: Anna Calder-Marshall.
The Bishop of London: Malcolm Sinclair.
The City Lawyer: Shereen Martin.
Choristers: Richard Griffiths, Luca Latchman, Eigo Matsumoto, James Murray, Eskandar Rashidian, Lucas Watson.
Director: Howard Davies.
Designer: Tim Hatley.
Lighting: Mark Henderson.
Sound: Mike Walker.
Composer: Stephen Warbeck.
Movement: Stephen Mear.
Assistant director: Jez Pike.
Temple was first performed at Donmar Warehouse Theatre, London, on 21 May 2015.
2015-06-16 01:02:30
