Welcome to the Drama Group website.
This is where we will indicate changes to the site.
Epsom Methodist Drama Group has been seen (over the past 60+ years) in a variety of plays: short plays and longer plays, plays with large casts and plays with small casts, "costume" plays and contemporary plays, farces and thought-stimulating plays, on a stage and in the round, in church and out of church. In short, we love drama for the fun and fulfilment.
We run workshops and read plays and membership is open to all.
YOU are invited to discuss MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL, please join our group on
December 8th 2009 at Epsom Methodist Church at 7.30
T S Eliot's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL
The Drama Group at Epsom Methodist Church in a production of T S Eliot's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL in November 2009.
There are two performances in Leatherhead Parish Church
on Thursday and Friday, November 19th and 20th
Map is here for Leatherhead Parish Church
Note there is parking behind the Parish hall, zoom into map and use Aerial view to see space and entry
And another performance at Epsom Methodist Church on Saturday, November 21st.
Map is here for Epsom Methodist Church
Tickets £10 (£8 concessions) from Dovecote Bookshop (tel. 01372 817707) or cast members. If you cannot get to EMC on Sat 21st Nov, there will also be performances in Leatherhead Parish Church on Thurs. and Fri. 19th and 20th Nov. also at 8 p.m.
Tickets for Leatherhead performances from Barton's Bookshop, 2 Bridge Street, Leatherhead (tel. 01372 362988) or cast members.
Proceeds for EMC Youth Hall, Christian Youth Work in Leatherhead and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy Research
"Thoughts about the Play"
T.S.Eliot wrote ‘Murder in the Cathedral’ for the Canterbury Cathedral Festival in 1935. Its central action, the assassination of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, took place in December 1170, but in the story Eliot finds implications for any time in the history of the Christian Church. The conflict between Thomas and Henry II exemplifies the recurrent clash between Church and State, still an issue, though muted, in our own time. The dangers in the brutal repression of a totalitarian state, important in 1930s Europe, are strikingly depicted in the characters of the Knights in Act 2 and their speeches justifying the murder are recognisably the ‘spin-doctoring’ familiar to us today.
While Eliot explores one of his favourite themes of time and eternity, the play is also firmly rooted in the events of Thomas’s life. Through his duologues with the First and Second Tempters (Eliot expected the Tempters to double as the Knights), the play economically depicts Thomas’s youthful friendship with King Henry, then his time as Chancellor, when his power was as great or greater than the King’s. From the Priests we learn that Thomas was an outsider at court in his rise to power, but as Archbishop very popular with the common people. The Second Knight, with unconscious irony, questions – ‘God knows why!’ – Thomas became ‘more priestly than the Priests’ when Henry, attempting to control the Church, appointed him Archbishop.
The Third Tempter offers Thomas an attractive role in his present situation, by inviting him to exploit the current conflict between the King and the barons by allying himself with them against the King. The Fourth Tempter, by far the most seductive, explores Thomas’s secret ambition, the most powerful role of all, that of a martyr. The crux of the play lies here: will Thomas SEEK martyrdom for his own glory and power, or because it is the will of God? Thomas conquers this temptation, with more difficulty than he found in rejecting the first three, during the Chorus’s terror-stricken speech which reminds him of their spiritual dependence on him.
All four Tempters refer to Thomas’s cardinal sin, his pride. The idea of a besetting sin, a ‘fatal flaw’ as it is sometimes called, suggests the structure and driving force of a classical Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. Eliot uses the style of Greek tragedy in several ways: the action begins shortly before the climax of the story; there are one-to-one encounters which affect a decision which the central character, the protagonist, has to make; the play is written in verse, except when the Knights’ speeches jerk us into the twenty-first century; and, above all, Eliot creates a Chorus of women whose ideas and experiences are at first circumscribed by their familiar humdrum twelfth century lives but who are forced to express the significance and horror of what is happening to Thomas.
The other stage influence is that of medieval morality plays, such as ‘Everyman’, which explores a man’s spiritual life by presenting abstract ideas, such as Good Deeds, as characters who converse with the central figure. Early medieval poetry uses alliteration rather than rhyme; Thomas’s interviews with the Tempters are liberally sprinkled with alliterative phrases such as ‘wit and wine and wisdom’, ‘cabined in Canterbury, realmless ruler’, ‘delegate to deal the doom of damnation, to condemn kings, not serve among their servants, is my open office’, followed by the punchy rhyme ‘No! Go.’
Rather than stay anchored in 1170, we have chosen to stress the play’s timelessness by using costumes to indicate character and function rather than historical period.
Chris Watt
