Oberammagau Passion Play 2022

 

 

Visiting the famous Passion Play at Oberammergau is, I should imagine, on numerous people’s bucket lists. I have wanted to see the production since I first read of the play and the vow that inspired it in my teens. The play has been performed at (usually) ten year intervals since 1634; the performance now habitually falls on years ending in 0, although the 2020 production has been delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Three years after I’d booked a trip to see it, I witnessed the play on Thursday 14 July, 2022. The performance takes place in an enormous auditorium seating just short of 5000 people, with the audience covered but the stage open to the sky (with the Alps in the background). The cast, musicians, singers and crew are entirely drawn from the village, and in production years the performances last from May to early October. A good short read about the play is A Pilgrim's Guide to Oberammergau and its Passion Play by Raymond Goodburn (Pilgrim Book Services, 2019) which provides a history of the play and an account of the logistics of the production.

 

The history of the play is not without its controversies, most specifically the virulent anti-Semitism in the text, which caused a certain audience member named Adolf Hitler to proclaim that the play’s continued production was vital, as it "revealed the muck and mire of Jewry." The same text that Hitler witnessed continued in performance until the first production of the 21^st century, in 2000. The play as now performed is mostly by director Christian Stückl, freely adapted from medieval Mystery Play material and subsequent 19^th Century revisions by Othmar Weis and J. A. Daisenberger. The Stückl play is a wordy and theologically dense piece which dramatises the Passion story as one of inter-faith conflict, with Jesus the reforming Jew coming into conflict with the ritualistic, empty and hypocritical state of his Jewish religion as propagated by the High Priest Caiaphas and his allies in the Sanhedrin. There are several scenes which almost entirely consist of arguments between the conservative faction, led by Caiaphas, and the supporters of Jesus, led by Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Given that the play is performed in German and without any English surtitles, this is a challenging watch for a non-German speaker (you can follow the text in a printed booklet), but even for those fluent in German, the play offers no concessions to contemporary dramaturgy – it reminds me most strongly of 18^th and 19^th century writers such as Schiller, Shaw (albeit without the humour), or the Ibsen of Emperor and Galilean. Despite this tendency to verbosity, the play communicates most effectively through visual statements – we see Jesus the servant of his fellows washing their feet, and Caiaphas being borne on a throne by servants. Their contrasting attitudes to leadership and serving their communities is thus simply and eloquently staged.

 

The director states in the programme that we can no longer rely on audiences to be familiar with the teachings of Jesus (although this presupposes a younger audience than was in evidence at the performance I attended). Despite beginning with the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on a donkey to adoring crowds, much of the first part of the five hour play is taken by Jesus repeating elements of his sermons and disputations from earlier episodes in the gospel (including the prevented stoning of the woman taken in adultery and the Magdalene bathing him with expensive balm). This Jesus is strongly on the side of social justice, pacifism, mutual love and respect. His criticisms of the High Priest and his cronies are based in their failure to help the people or offer good role models. There is some ambiguity in the motivations of Caiaphas and his associates: they claim that they are preventing Jesus from stirring up social unrest and are therefore protecting the people from Roman retaliatory violence (we see Pilate warning them re Jesus), yet they seem personally stung by Jesus critique of them, and therefore his arrest and persecution is an act of spiteful revenge. The portrait of the anti-Jesus majority of the Sanhedrin is carefully handled, to prevent any descent into the kind of medieval caricatures that Durer depicted so viscerally in his Jesus Among the Doctors (1506). Nevertheless, Annas and others are pretty repellent and unforgiving characters. It is clear that Stückl keeps emphasising Jesus and his companion’s Jewishness as a counterbalance; the infamous blood curse – traditionally shouted as the crowd is baying for the release Barabbas and the crucifixion of Christ – is excised, and it’s clear that there is a large Jewish minority in the crowd that believes Jesus to be innocent and wants him freed. Unfortunately, the bad elements outnumber the decent, and who could deny the simple truth of this ever-recurring tendency of the honest to be outnumbered in the popular voice by the barbarous. In the same way, the argument between a formal ritualisation of religion/conviction in the public performance of virtue by a wealthy elite, and the interiorisation of godliness/goodness by those with less power, which manifests in works of empathy and charity, is an eternally reoccurring tendency, occurring today for people of all creeds and nations, those with formal religions or those with ideologies which have replaced religion in the public sphere of our contemporary societies.

 

If Caiaphas and his crew are dubious in their motivations, the play portrays Judas as much more conflicted. He spends the early part of the play arguing with Jesus about the best way to propagate the message and the efficacy of armed rebellion. His betrayal of Jesus is shown to be based in a naïve belief that if he brings Caiaphas and Jesus together for a chat, Jesus may bring the sceptics in the Sanhedrin around. Of course, he soon discovers that Caiaphas has no interest in listening and is actively plotting Jesus’ death. This sends Judas into a spiral of self-recrimination and despair, disgusted that the Sanhedrin has given him money for his traitorous kiss, and unable to turn back time or persuade the priests to release Jesus. Judas’ realisation of what he has done and his inability to forgive himself for it is dramatized in a sequence of scenes alongside Peter’s three denials. The contrast between Judas committing suicide because he cannot forgive himself and Peter’s accepting that Jesus has forgiven him for his weakness is emphasised in a strong piece of dramatic structuring. Judas and Peter’s betrayals are of a type together, yet one finds forgiveness and the other cannot.

 

Because Jesus repeats the greatest hits of His ministry in the first part, He has rather more dialogue than He otherwise might in a Passion. There’s also a certain amount of character development – He realises in an early scene that He is going to die in Jerusalem, and confronts the full horror of it in His Gethsemane prayer. In the prayer, He acknowledges that His fate was written before the world began; He is comforted in Gethsemane by the ministrations of an angel (portrayed as a young man without any supernatural attributes). In this way, we feel Jesus’s story as both a very human one – He is assenting to giving up His life – but also the story of a being who is more than human. He clearly asserts to Caiaphas that He is the Messiah, but Nicodemus interprets His supposed blasphemies about being the Son of God by reminding the accusers that all of them refer to God as a father. For me, the story of someone who makes the monumental decision to undergo trial and death, then who finds some solidity within Himself to bear the agony, was the strongest element of the play. I wondered what was going on in His mind as he went through the trials and the Stations of the Cross; as the play offered no interior dialogues for Jesus here, we are left to imagine.

 

The play’s linear narrative – from the entry into Jerusalem to the discovery of the empty tomb by Mary Magdalene – is punctuated by oratorio-like musical interludes (reminiscent of Bach’s Passions), written in the nineteenth century by Rochus Dedler and revised a number of times since. These are beautiful and powerfully performed by the chorus and soloists; the soprano solo before the Gethsemane scene is particularly exquisite. The hybrid of dramatic play and oratorio is an unusual form, for which I cannot think of any equivalent. The oratorio sections also feature numerous tableaux of Old Testament episodes – the expulsion from Eden, Job mocked, the parting of the red sea, Abraham and Isaac, the raising of the brazen serpent – which speak in relation to the following Passion sequence of scenes. In this way, the play finds a theatrical equivalent to the typographical elements of the Gospels – as if Jesus’s Passion were being underlined as a version of numerous Jewish myths, their ultimate expression in time and space and history. A real, historical man consciously takes upon Himself the mantle of the legend. 

 

The stage is made up of classical columns, emphasising that the life and death of Jesus took place within the setting of classical antiquity, yet also offered a challenge to those who build the columns and pediments, as well as those who collaborate or make deals with the tyrants. It feels significant that the top of the stage was open to the sky – offering a metaphorical escape. We never see the risen Jesus, but the missing roof proposes a possibility.

 

There’s a lot to consider in the village’s vow to continually perform this man’s trial and death. It is the ultimate example of community theatre – about 2500 of the village’s 5000 inhabitants are involved. The production is an enormous spectacle – the entry into Jerusalem, the driving of the merchants from the temple, the crowd crying for the release of Barabbas, the crucifixion are all immense scenes, stretching across the stage as a living widescreen experience. We chatted to a few of the actors – our waiter in the inn before the play was a performer, and we met Judas, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea and Sanhedrin lawyer Nathaniel as they lounged on the steps outside the theatre at the break. The standard of performance is very high and the concentration is spellbindingly held; the phenomenon gives the lie to the false dichotomy of the amateur and professional. In this way, it is a dramatization of a central tenet of the Gospel – that we all carry a potential within us to present the image of God…

 

 

An Encounter with a Prophet at Snorrastofa

On holiday in Iceland, and using it as an opportunity to finally read The Prose Edda, I noticed that there was a cultural and medieval centre called Snorrastofa, based around its author/compiler Snorri Sturluson at his former homestead at Reykholt. My partner, a friend and I drove there from Reykavik. Our encounter with the local Lutheran priest Geir Waage, an expert on Snorri and Icelandic history, is worth recording.

The woman staffing the centre could not have been friendlier, so we were already in good spirits when we entered the small exhibition telling the story of Snorri's life and times. As we went round, an elderly priest emerged from a room at the side of the exhibition hall. Peaking in the room later, it seemed to be a combination of study and sacristy; the priest is based at the small church a stone's throw away from the centre. The priest, whom I later learned is named Waage, emerged from this room and began speaking to us of the nursery rhyme London Bridge is Falling Down. He wondered if we, as Englishmen, knew all of the verses of the song, and of its origin. As per most of the English he encountered, we were in the dark. He theorized that its origins are in the demolition of the bridge by Viking invaders in the early years of the 11th century AD. He said that this event was told in Snorri's Heimskringla, a chronicle of the Kings of Norway. This led to a long discourse on the Chronicle. It was written in Old Norse, which was no longer the vernacular within a couple of hundred years of the composition. Geir mused on how a society which loses its language loses its roots, its culture, and becomes "stupid." He told of how the book was translated from the 16th century onward, and influenced various Nationalist movements and Northern expansionist escapades. One was never quite sure how much Waage approved on this use of the Chronicle, but he was sure of its power. He pointed to various editions and described them as "more dangerous than gunpowder." We agreed that ideas can have huge effects, as witnessed by the current Brexit events in the UK.

Waage pointed to a medieval map of the Northern territories, and to a small town which might have been Molde. He said that many Icelanders could trace their lineage back to that town, as can many of history's movers and shakers. "Your Elizabeth," he cried, "is a descendant of a fat viking from there, called Rollo. He could not sit on a horse and had to be wheeled around in a cart." Rollo invaded Normandy, and his line led to William the Conqueror, and so to the current Royal House of Windsor. Waage made much mention of genealogy, of bloodlines, of where ancestry can be traced. He spoke of the medieval slave trade and of how Norse blood was mixed through it with Celts, Asians, and Africans. He is fascinated by the ways in which genetics, and genetic defects, can help with genealogy.

Waage is a man with a full panoply of theatrical props. He carries a wooden walking stick, with which he liberally points and gesticulates. At one point in his discourse, he laid aside the stick and took out a small horn with a stopper top. He proceeded to lay a line of snuff as black and fine as dry lava across the back of his hand, and hoovered it in one swift sniff. Later, when we met him again near Snorri's grave, he was carrying a handful of Rosemary.

Across the grave, he told us the story of Snorri's end. Hiding in a cellar, hunted by opposing forces in the contemporary civil war, Snorri was killed by a reign of blows by certain kinsmen. His adopted son was blinded and castrated by his brothers a few months later. Waage noted how many of the sagas of those times are plundered by the writers of Game of Thrones. He emphasized the bloodthirsty cruelty of that civil war, and how it was caused by a concentration of power and money in a few hands. Earlier, he had blamed the delay in building a museum to house the Icelandic sagas on the concentration of money in the hands of a few. He condemned the Iceland of now as wealthy but corrupt, and with great inequality. He predicted that we would see civil war in Europe in our time, given the widespread concentration of money in the hands of the few. This felt like the climax of his talk, after which he left us to look at the remains of the cellar in which Snorri was killed.

Waage's prediction has rung in my ears ever since, as there's something about the prophecies of a man so steeped in history, lore, and the study of laws. He described the Sagas as tales of men who transgress the Law, and so bring ruin on themselves and others. Waage is the nearest to an Old Testament prophet I have ever personally encountered, and it's funny how just a few minutes in such a person's company can "seem like a couple of months".

                                         Geir Waage at Snorri's grave.

Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall

I went to see Bob Dylan at the Royal Albert Hall, the first of what was for him a three night stretch and his first time at the venue since the chaos tour of 1966. My friend and I walked into the venue at 7:30pm and the speakers were already announcing that he was coming on stage in 5 minutes. So, a few minutes after we took our stalls seats, on Dylan was - like another world appearing in this one and it's an odd adjustment to make, because it's Dylan and there's so much history and, if you're a devoted follower of Bob (I confess I am) a heap of an intensely personal relationship with the artist's work. It doesn't make sense coming from work and the tube and the pub and the street and seeing him, this glorious anomaly, up there sharing time and space with me.

He seems to know this, as the first few songs establish the reminder of where you are - in his world - from the off. He's in the Albert Hall for the first time since he was being booed in the UK and he begins with "I used to care but things have changed". It's not the greatest version of the song he's ever played (although it doesn't slack) but the chorus reinforces who he is, what he's done, what this place means, where we've all gone in the meantime. The second number She Belongs to Me pulls us solidly into the whole strange mystery of what he does - it can't be put into any other words or context than what we have here in our ears and eyes; the song admits that the singer doesn't know what this muse that sings to and through him is but it's happening and he's opening the door to it again. By the time he's singing Beyond Here Lies Nothing, he's seduced me into thinking "well, he's right - what is there outside this world that gets created when he sings this stuff" - he's singing for his audience and tempting us to see that
"I love you pretty baby
You're the only love I've ever known
Just as long as you stay with me
The whole world is my throne"
And just as if he's casting a spell which seems to be just about Bob Dylan, one performer and the audience he's wooed and won the gate fully opens and there's an entry point here to the truth that beyond what any of us create from our sharing our love, there's nothing.

The past few times I've seen him I've been struck by how, physically, Bob Dylan on stage is this compendium of weird gestures and stances. There are these odd ways of standing, these strange and ersatz gesticulations, this way of playing the audience and holding the mic stand which brings to mind a kaleidoscope giving glimpses of lounge singers, minstrels, vaudevillians, Vegas showmen, silent film clowns, starlets, melodrama hams, 50s pop stars - all these crazy collective memories of what a popular performer does on a stage. It's like he's so totally performing for us that he's a old time performer - he can't be described of doing anything natural - and so this ironizes the whole performance of Bob Dylan and we're watching a legend consciously perform as an old pro. Coming from anyone else, the gestures and stances might be cod or clichéd or dated but coming from Dylan they're done with a wink, a sense of "aw, shucks, y'know how important I am and and you're going to let me get away with this." Dylan has always been sophisticated theatre games.

He plays a fair bit of piano (zero guitar, which is sometimes on/sometimes off these days - is it a choice or is the arthritis playing up?). Watching him at the old Johanna, I had this vision of how this is that kid from Duluth, Bobby Zimmerman, who wanted to be Little Richard and did a spell on the keyboards with Bobby Vee's touring band way back in the late 1950s under the name Elston Gunnn. Zimmerman, Gunnn, Dylan, Blind Boy Grunt - all these ghosts playing in that shell up there on stage and brought to life. A ghost machine that can scare you it'll psychotically Pay in Blood, make you swoon with over some gorgeous Simple Twist of Fate, remind your Forgetful Heart of how you used to be and lull you into a false sense of things having become a too diluted Spirit on the Water before the the mask is changed again you realise that that this is just another tease:
"You think I'm over the hill
You think I'm past my prime
Let me see what you got
We can have a whoppin' good time."

Near the end of the set - which was pretty heavily drawn from recent material with only two 60s, two 70s, one 80s number and the rest from the last decade and a half, to emphasis that this is most definitely not nostalgia - the man who'd begun by wooing us and reminding us of our affair with him performs a killer version of the recent Long and Wasted Years; it's a bitter lament of a man who has some time ago fallen out of love with his partner and reflects on the bad time they've for quite some time together through their life (and now it's, it is hinted, the Apocalypse). Dylan performs this centre stage, the giant organ of the Albert Hall lit ostentatiously above him; the sound is 50s dragged up like glam and the drum punch stops to the song crack the mind before we're dragged out of each halt by the winding guitar. Dylan barks the lyrics at us and jolts as if he's a Jerry Lee Lewis zombie electronically revivified. At the close, he snarls "so much for these long and wasted years." The song stops and the concert comes to its formal end. He's gone from the stage and the effect is shocking - as if he's got us here, seduced us, played with us and then suddenly turned on us, broke up with us and finally walked out. It's daring and thrilling and not something you expect from someone who, if he were anyone else of a similar stature, would be either preserved in aspic or telling us how much he loves us all. It's both not what I excepted at all but there again, of course, exactly the kind of moment I expect Bob Dylan to deliver.

This Tempest storming out is, of course, another trick of this particular Prospero's. He's soon back on, playing an encore consisting of a killer psychedelic All Along the Watchtower and the elegiac Roll on John. He's show that he's still a conjurer to be reckoned with and his staff ain't broke, there's still a whole lot of shaking going on.

Henry VI, Shakespeare's primer in History

Shakespeare's Globe are currently offering audiences the relatively rare opportunity to see all of Shakespeare's Henry VI plays over one day, either at the Globe itself or on tour (including some Wars of the Roses battlefields). The plays add up to an extraordinary theatrical experience, being a kind of primer to History through Shakespeare's eyes. Shakespeare later returned to History in his Henry IV and Roman plays which are more sophisticated in terms of structure, language and character. Yet there is something raw and elemental about the Henry VI plays which makes me wish that they were better known and performed more often. A full day contemplating an Elizabethan contemplation of English History is a day well spent.

It is probable that what is now known as Henry VI Part 1 is the latest of the plays, first performed after the success of Parts 2 and 3. The play isn't really about the Wars of the Roses, being what we'd now term a prequel. The play's main focus is on the loss of France by the English nobility, as Henry V's victory at Agincourt is undone by an insurgency led by the French Dauphin and other nobles, assisted mightily by a woman whom we now know as Saint Joan of Arc but in Shakespeare's time was considered by the English as a witch and called Joan La Pucelle. The French are given a run for their money by the occupying English Army led by Lord Talbot. This French story is interspersed with scenes showing the beginning rumbles of York's rebellion, what was to become the Wars of the Roses back in England.

Talbot is the most striking character in Part 1. He is a kind of archetype of the loyal soldier, completely brilliant on the battlefield, absolutely sure-footed tactically but ultimately betrayed by his superiors in the English Army, whose squabbles lead to him being denied reinforcements in a key battle (Castillon) and the ensuing loss of his life (alongside his son, John). Shakespeare (and his collaborators) take some liberties with the actual history in this portrait but this allows them to create a rich and resonant character; Talbot is not very different from the contemporary British soldier in Iraq who loses his life because he was denied the proper equipment by slippery politicians who have their own concerns back home. Of course, Talbot does not question the war itself. In Talbot's brave, forlorn death we see (when the plays are performed in historical sequence) Shakespeare's History claiming its first victim. A man who lives by the sword dies by the sword, whatever the morality of the battle or sense of patriotic duty he is performing under, Talbot's reward is death. It is a death which involves the extinguishing of the life of another member of his family, whose demise makes Talbot's all the more personally painful. Howard Barker says ""...the experience of history is an experience of pain; the words are interchangeable" and the Henry VI plays are very much a pageant of pain.

The England-set scenes in Henry VI Part 1 snake around the French scenes, sowing seeds for the later civil war. The important thing here is that those seeds have been planted before the action happens, with the deposition of Richard II and the usurpation of the throne by Henry Bolingbroke (Henry IV); Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York discovers that he has a legitimate claim to the throne, albeit by such a tortuous lineage that the explanation of it brought floods of laughter from the Globe audience. More than one critic has linked these plays with Aeschylus' Oresteia and there is a strong sense in which they, like much of Greek tragedy, show the workings of fate and the payment for past sins, which might lay dormant but fester until they erupt. There is a warning here – don't let anybody think they've got away with anything, as Time working through History continually brings the past to knock on the present's doors. And, Shakespeare being as Biblical an author as he was Greek, we see the sins of the fathers visited on future generations.

There were some unfortunate cuts in the Globe's productions, understandable in practical terms but still losing some of the point of the play. An early scene (Part 1 Act 2, Scene 3) featuring the Countess of Auvergne attempting to trap Lord Talbot through means of sorcery and enchantment. In itself, it adds little to the onward motion of the narrative – but taken together with Joan's use of sorcery to battle the English and Margaret of Anjou (albeit unwittingly) enchanting the Earl of Suffolk towards the end, there is a strong sense that underneath the use of force is an attempt to use dark and irrational forces (be they devilish or simply of the body and beauty) to influence the game. It is as if Shakespeare is acknowledging that men, power and weapons are not all that there is. This theme continues throughout the trilogy, with the downfall of the Duchess of Gloucester in Part 2, the evolution of Margaret of Anjou into a veritable Deborah of the Lancastrian side throughout to the prolongation of the War of the Roses caused by Edward IV's marriage to Lady Grey in Part 3. Desire and seduction have their role to play in History but in the Henry VI plays, desire is always dragged tomb-wards by events.

The Globe programme makes much of the fact that the plays were not written as a sequence and their titles were not, initially, Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3. Only Part 1 originally had that King's name in it's title (Harry the Sixth), ironically I presume given the play is largely about the loss of the lands the more popular Harry the fifth won. Henry VI barely appears in Part 1, and when he does he is a callow youth - yet his character is nicely set up: he prefers books and study to public life, even shrinking initially at the idea he has to marry someone. Some read the plays as a dire warning against the centre of power being weak and vacillating but Henry seems to me to be more an emblem of a sensitive human being caught in History's web; History is unsparing even of those who don't take up the sword, and sometimes a man's birth drags him onto History's field of horror. 

Part 1 is very much a play with a central story (the battles in France) with a sub-plot (the enmity between the Houses of Lancaster and York) snaking through it. Part 2 (originally The First part of the Contention betwixt the two famous Houses of Yorke and Lancaster) is much more a play of two halves. In the first three Acts (The Globe wisely has Part 2's interval at the close of Act Three), we see mostly men of influence interacting in interiors. These are very much scenes set in the corridors of power and much of the action is through talk; yet violence is an ever-present subtext of the talk and the first half of the play ends with the bringing down of the King's Protector, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. Alongside Talbot, Gloucester is about the only character in the plays who offers anything like a positive image of a statesman. Early in Part 2, Gloucester is tempted by his Lady Macbeth-lite wife to usurp the throne, he being the next in line for the Lancastrian claim after Henry VI. He refuses to countenance this and we see that he, like Talbot, is a man for whom duty is more important than personal ambition. It is telling that, in the three plays as a historical sequence, the first major characters on the English side to be brought down to death are Talbot and Gloucester, the only two political animals who have duty as a spur. Shakespeare's monster History devours those most likely to offer loyalty and stability first, in order to open up its chaotic mouth. Yet is Gloucester good? In a scene cut from the Globe production, he has a couple of con-artist paupers flogged soundly – the kind of Shakespearean scene which is likely to give a left-liberal audience qualms. Shakespeare doesn't here question have anyone question the rightness of such rough justice (as Lear does in his mad scenes) and so the scene stands as an emblem of good social justice which potentially undermines itself to some audiences. The political Shakespeare of the Henry VI plays is, as far as I can see, a social conservative who extols patriotic duty, the strong arm of the law, strong and non-vacillating government.

Once Gloucester is out of the way, the contest for the throne begins in earnest and things fall apart. The consequences of the alliances and disagreements and decisions in the corridors of power are seen in the blood spilled in the open air of public spaces. The second half of Part 2 is, in contrast to the first's interiors, almost all exterior scenes of riot and battle. First, York prompts Jack Cade's rebellion (an Elizabethan conspiracy theory, if there ever was one) and, that being put down, the first battle of the Wars of the Roses takes place. It is worth pausing over Cade's rebellion a moment. Shakespeare is clearly not in sympathy with the revolt. Cade the puppet of people more powerful and educated than himself; once he gets power over other human beings, he immediately begins arbitrary executions, show-trials and a cultural year zero policy. Although some of Cade's commands are greeted by an audience with glee ("let's kill all the lawyers"), this is a pretty dispiriting portrait of revolutionary energy; I doubt Shakespeare would have been surprised by the 20th Century's Stalin, Mao or Pol Pot, nor stored up much hope in the recent "Arab Spring". Revolt and revolution is, through Shakespeare's eyes, the mania of the mob; Cade is a thuggish, murderous, vainglorious vanguard. Anyone with hopes of human progress brought about by violent means might bristle at this portrait of revolutionary energy but History offers more evidence for Shakespeare's vision than against it.

Part 2 ends with England in the grip of civil war. Part 3 (originally The True Tragedy of Richard, Duke of York) shows civil war as a horror show and conveyor belt of pain, each major stage figure passing towards their death. Atrocity pretty soon becomes the norm, as Margaret and Clifford for the Lancastrians summarily execute York's young son, the Earl of Rutland, during the Battle of Wakefield. The historical Rutland was 17 and older than Richard of Gloucester and George of Clarence when he died; Shakespeare makes him much younger. The killing is portrayed as a despicable act, on a par with Macbeth's murder of Macduff's children; what we would now consider a war crime. The slaughter of child Rutland sets a tone of darkness which pervades the first part of the play. In the midst of the darkness, the central scene of the first part has King Henry come centre stage and wish himself out of History, a mere "gentle swain" counting the days, months and years as he tends his sheep. Being in History is unforgiving and straight after his speech Henry is made to witness the mourning of a Son who has killed his father and a Father who has killed his son, a schematic pairing with little historical basis but which beautifully emblematizes the hellishness of the world being staged.

Just as Part 3 becomes almost unbearably painful in its impact, Shakespeare does what might be counted as the first genius coup de theatre in his career. We've already met the Duke of York's son, Richard of Gloucester, as a minor character in Part 2; intriguingly, the audience yelped with joy as soon as they saw his limping, twisted form come on stage. During Act 3 of Henry VI Part 3, Richard gives a long, Machiavellian speech outlining his future ambitions and determination to let nothing stand in the way of his own progress to the throne. There are a number of curious things about this speech. One is that it is absolutely not "set-up" in anything we previously see or hear of from Richard. He has been a loyal son of York, understandably sickened by his brother Rutland and father's killings. He is suddenly revealed as a psychopath and sociopath par excellence, a far more terrifying figure than anyone we have hitherto seen on the stage. The effect is almost as if we had seen a number of larvae wriggling in the murk of the Wars and now one suddenly bursts forth from its chrysalis as a Death's Head Hawk-Moth. Richard appears like a great eruption from History, just as the Beast bursts forth from the sea in the Book of Revelations. Richard is certainly a consequence of the chaos the civil war has caused – which is not to say that there is merely a cheap psychological point being made about a deformed and abused man who experienced the butchering of his father and brother and so becomes a monster (although that's certainly in there) but that the plays vision has it that such monsters in unstable times get the opportunity to burst forth, as night follows day.

The second intriguing thing is that the audience love Richard and his speech. Not only does Richard fulfil the needs of History, he embodies the need of the audience to have the horrors of history mediated in a way which can still be seen as entertainment. A play which continued as the first 3 Acts of Henry VI Part 3 does without Richard coming in and entertaining us would be unbearable for a popular audience. Shakespeare has to continue to the worst but, to do so, needs Richard's theatricality and showmanship to carry his audience with him (we should always remember that Shakespeare was a populist writer and he writes his plays with the crowd in mind, not a cognoscenti or school of aesthetes). Richard's speech is a perfect example of theatre doing its thing as a means of inducting an audience into areas it might not otherwise wish to go. It's no wonder that Shakespeare went on to write a play with Richard at its centre; management, audiences and his own canniness must have been begging him..

The Globe put Part 3's interval after Richard's speech and follow it with the scene where Margaret and Warwick both approach the French King Louis for support. This scene is played as farce, with Louis a camp and broad parody Frenchman. This feels right, as not only are the shifting tones of the play necessary for the attention of the audience but also History, although painful, is farcical from a certain point of view. Louis takes himself very seriously indeed and therefore we can laugh at him; Richard brings us in on the joke, and so we laugh with him.

The play runs apace to its end at the Globe after this, with Henry and Edward IV on and off the throne for each other as if on a jigsaw. The Globe cut a lot of this fluctuation in fortunes, which is again a shame, as the text has intriguing, Jarry-like elements of absurdity not emphasised when these cuts are made. Finally, the Yorkists win at Tewkesbury, killing Prince Edward of Wales in front of his Mother, Margaret of Anjou. Margaret is one of Shakespeare's greatest female characters, every bit as developed as Lady Macbeth and Cleopatra and with a longer emotional journey through the trilogy than any of them. The shy princess brought into the net of history by the Earl of Sussex has seen her husband deposed, her lover beheaded (she carries around his severed head for some of Henry VI Part 2), finally becoming the Lancastrian warrior that her husband could never be. It was she that rubbed York's nose in the blood of his child, Rutland and now she weeps to see her own child die, realising too late what humanity is and how much pain is involved in such atrocities. It is a tribute to Shakespeare's writing that, although we know Margaret's complaints are rich considering her previous antics, we still nevertheless empathise with her pain. Even better, Shakespeare lets us realise how ironic Margaret's complaints are without having another character point out this irony in on-the-nose dialogue (dramatists, learn from this).

Richard of Gloucester scoots from the Tewkesbury battlefield to murder Henry VI; the apotheosis of History meets out its revenge against the man who would escape it. Henry's killing is purely about ambition and ideology – Henry stands in the way of the Yorkist claim to the throne (and therefore Richard's aim at it) but his friends and supporters are all dead and he has zero capital with the English people. Richard's killing of Henry is the symbolic sacrifice of an innocent. In his dying breath, Henry cries "God forgive my sins, and pardon thee!" It is no coincidence that in the final scene (in lines I can't remember being in The Globe version), Richard explicitly draws comparison between himself and Judas. Shakespeare, working in a deeply Christian culture and tradition, shows History as culminating in the sacrifice of Christ.

There is of course a large dollop of Tudor ideology in the Henry VI plays. I won't say propaganda, as I don't think the Elizabethan playwrights were being consciously propagandistic, rather simply repeating the commonplace beliefs – ideologies – of their time. Henry, near the end of Part 3, lauds the young Henry Tudor (future Earl of Richmond, nemesis of Richard III and so Henry VII) and Henry VI's death as Christ suggests Henry VII's victory was a kind of Second Coming, which is problematic to say the least. Tudor England was nobody's idea of paradise and in later plays Shakespeare dramatises the problems. Despite this, there is a strong sense in which the Henry VI plays transcend the particular history they are writing about or indeed writing from and offer a vision of History itself, a terrifying vision which, if you factor in the problems of seeing the Tudors as bringing long-lasting stability, is akin to Joyce's "…nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

In the programme notes, The Globe go out of their way to emphasise that the plays were not written as and never meant to be performed as a cycle. Yet by happy serendipity and beyond all reasonable expectation, they work as perfectly well in cycle as the Oresteia or Der Ring des Nibelungen. They ought to be much more frequently performed – I'd like to see the National do the three plays as uncut as possible in the Olivier with a large cast and major actors in the major roles; one of the problems with the Globe's touring version is that, whilst it is very good indeed on its own terms, the battle and mob scenes are very sparse and the cast have to double so much that many major characters (Warwick suffers particularly) don't come across as individually as they might. The plays are, as I said at the outset, Shakespeare's primer in the problem that is History. Though one might disagree with the pessimism of the vision, World History since their writing has tended to reinforce it, as the likes of Henry VI, Talbot, Humphrey, the Richards (of York and Gloucester), Margaret, Joan La Pucelle and Jack Cade et al try to either make good in, escape from or manipulate History to their own ends and all end up drawn down into its flood, dragging whole peoples down with them.

Flemish Primitives Part 1, Hieronymus Bosch

 

I spent a week’s holiday in Belgium, which afforded me the opportunity to visit a number of important galleries and soak myself in the work of the so-called Flemish Primitives, the early Netherlandish painters who flourished between the 15^th and 16^th centuries. I say “so-called” primitives, as their work is anything but primitive, rather being a school of sophisticated masterpieces by supremely talented individuals on mostly Christian but sometimes classical themes.

Thinking back, the work of perhaps the best known of these painters, Hieronymus Bosch, was one of my ways into classical Art when I was in my teens. I haven’t had much opportunity to see his work in the originals, there being one solitary, albeit astonishing, Bosch in the National Gallery; I did see a number in the Prado in Spain a few years ago, including the surprisingly small Garden of Earthly Delights triptych. Virtually the first painting I encountered in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts in Brussels was the Temptation of St Anthony triptych, a much bigger series. I’d known this painting from book reproductions for half my life (we even used the figure of the bird with the letter as part of the publicity for my play Groping in the Dark) but seeing it up close and personal like this was thrilling. The work teams with vibrant detail and writhes with a terrible life. All three panels show scenes from the life of the early Church desert father St Anthony, who was assailed by the world, the flesh and the devil as he attempted to put his mind solely to Godly thoughts in his wilderness retreat. Bosch is a mysterious figure about whom little is known; one theory has it that he leaned towards a Cathar outlook and saw the material world as a stenching (all those decaying fish creatures!) thing of evil. Certainly in Bosch nature is prodigious in its production of horrors; figures mutate between the human, the demonic and the bestial, as if the world were merely a breeding ground for freaks, each one of which has its own peculiarities and quirks. The freaks torment, torture and prey on each other; there’s a curious attitude towards generation which suggests that the act of sexual congress produces this carnival of horrors in which the revellers get off on their terrible antics. The Saint must resist the blandishments of this world, which despite being horrific hold intense fascination. Only contemplation of the person of Christ and His sacrifice can take the Saint away from the demonic world and it takes an enervating effort to achieve communion with Christ (one of my favourite images in the painting, on the left panel, has Anthony being carried away by his companions, utterly exhausted). Even when the Saint appears in meditation in the right panel, his gaze is fixed on a table under which naked sinners are lost in violent, somnambulant revels – but here he has learned some distance, perhaps linking the Saint’s gaze with that of the ideal Artist, who can look at these things as mere vision; for whom the earth itself is a passing vision…

In Ghent, Bosch’s third and last and greatest version of Christ Carrying the Cross assaults the viewer with a vision of intense violence and hatred carrying on around a Jesus who, His mind entirely elsewhere, has transcended it despite still being physically a part of it. It is telling that all but one of the figures around Christ are male, testosterone-fuelled products of a brutal patriarchy against which only withdrawal to an inner world and passivity towards the outer aggression are the only answers. The one female figure is Veronica, who holds her veil on which Christ’s face has been miraculously implanted; she holds this out to the viewer and so Christ looks at us. This has a curious effect, as if I think of the veil with Christ’s face as a mirror, I also must widen my view and take the entire painting as a reflection; I wonder how much I contribute to this hell of aggression portrayed and how I can free myself from it. The aggressive world is timeless and ever-present, no matter what temporal ephemera happen to be around at any given moment; whether Christ (whatever He signifies) is the answer is another issue – the painting certainly posits the question of aggression with unwavering force. It is blindingly obvious that Bosch, in this painting and others, does not see the Church as a means to Christ, as the representatives of religion are themselves a part of the aggressive world and offer no solace; the good thief in the upper right corner swoons in terror at the words of his grisly confessor, who couldn’t be less Christ-like if he tried. The painting is a formal triumph, with Christ at the centre of a cross and the two thieves, Veronica and the hands of Simon of Cyrene at its four corners. I rather admire the gumption and resistance of the bad thief at the right lower corner but clearly it gets him nowhere and only adds to the ugliness of the scene.

Also in Ghent, Bosch’s St Jerome at Prayer echoes the theme of the St Anthony triptych but in a calmer key. St Jerome has abandoned the things of this world – his fine cloak, his book, his hat; he lies abject at the feet of his object of contemplation, Christ on the cross. The world around him is a complete wasteland, an emotional and physical dead end. Yet this desperate natural world cannot harm the Saint, as evidenced by the lion who has been turned here into little more than a gentle lamb.

In Bruges, Bosch’s Last Judgement triptych shows the world’s end. The last days are a war zone, with cities on fire and rats the size of cows in the streets. As ever, the prodigious demons torture the damned. Most medieval Last Judgements confine hell to the right hand corner  and give most space to the righteous and the Heavens above. Not so Bosch, for whom hell is almost the whole scene; his left hand panel is a calm scene where a few naked innocents are taught by angels or frolic in serenity and a single Gothic structure stands (in contrast to the many destroyed buildings in hell); there is also a hint here that a more positive vision of sexuality might be possible. According to Bosch, few will find a way out of hell, punishment, retribution which – if I for a moment apply a Blakean reading – can be seen a mindset rather than a physical place (although of course the mindset creates the physical into the embodiment of hell). For me, Bosch’s work is a vision of the mind in action, for the most part a terrible, tormented mind full of violence, enmity, sometimes strange pleasure but finally disease and death; yet there is an alternative mind of calm, knowledge, contemplation. Yet it takes tremendous efforts of concentration to take oneself from one to the other, and that other is always waiting with its pinchers to pinch and pull.

Bosch is the most extreme of the Flemish Primitives and whilst he sums up their vision is also anomalous in the fever pitch of his imagination. Like most of them he was a master craftsman with an enviable sense of composition and a mean ability to colour his scenes in vivid, striking tones. He’s a great place to start as his figures are so utterly indelible that once seen they are never to be forgotten. In my next blog, I’ll talk about some of his fellow Flemish Primitives, who give him some context and not a few of whom are geniuses in themselves. Yet I suspect he’ll always be my first love, who torments me with the most terrible and profound of loves.

Note on Writing AI characters

It is quite unusual for me to write futuristic or science fiction works but a recent challenge I set myself – to tell a particular story three times in a single short play, each at different historical junctures – led me to set a piece in the future. As a consistent character in the story is a police officer, I got the notion (not original, I own) that law enforcement in a possible future may be the responsibility of AI machines.

I do not know very much about AI, so it behoved that as well as setting my imagination to work, I read a little into the science of AI. I am not unfamiliar with fiction around the area, especially in film, having viewed the likes of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Blade Runner, Westworld and Robocop a number of times. I chose to read Artificial Intelligence: A Beginner's Guide by BlayWhitby (Oneworld Publications, 2008). It’s a simple book and suits my purposes perfectly, as I don’t wish to stage the science, just have some idea that there can be a science behind what I have happening on stage.

I have become especially intrigued by a major problem in AI, in that it has proved particularly difficult, if not impossible, for programmers to get their AI machines to distinguish between objects – the robots cannot tell a mobile phone from a glasses case, for example. This set me thinking about how this might be solved (and I am not in the least bit a scientist!) – but surely the answer might well come from looking at the problem from the other way around? The cell phone and the glasses case will tell the machine what they are. This can be done very simply by having all objects microchipped. Machines entering any space will scan the space and collect data from the microchips in the space, so that every object will be distinguishable from every other and identifiable to the machine. The microchip might well include details of the dimension of the object and even dimension of each part within, so that objects packed or piled together will be distinguishable. The microchip could also include ownership information. There might be some objects –like match sticks or fresh food – which a machine might encounter without a microchip; these would be dealt with in the same way that computerised counters deal with “unexpected items in the bagging area” – people would have to help out the machine. People themselves would be microchipped alongside objects…

The initial microchipping will involve a large-scale project to ensure that all spaces are machine-friendly. Will people agree to this whole-scale adaptation of their environment for the benefit of AI machines? I think about the way my xBox kinect works and the way in which my partner’s nephews and nieces are happy to adapt where they stand in the room for the benefit of playing a game; humans have always been willing to adapt their behaviour for the benefit of technology as long as they believe they're getting a pay-off…

In solving, at least for myself, one of the issues of AI, I can see how my machines in my play might negotiate environments. I am not sure I need to explain this within the play, but I can happily write them moving through the world without wondering how they know what’s around them.

2012 and End Things

A number of people thought that 2012 was going to be the end of time. On a personal level, 2012 looked at one point as being the end of my time. The Mayan calendar offered signs of apocalypse for the superstitious-minded; my own demise was predicted by signs of a more concrete nature, although they evaded interpretation for a while.

In October 2011, I suffered from what I thought was a flu. I was feverish for a week or so and then it passed. Another flu-like episode a fortnight later and I cursed my bad luck at picking up another virus so quickly. When a third episode occurred at around the same distance from the second, I realised that this might be something other than bouts of flu. A first doctor’s appointment led to a rather rash diagnosis of a chest infection and a prescription of antibiotics. Another recurrence and an appointment with a different doctor raised rather more concern and I was counselled that it might be any number of serious things; given to me amongst the possible causes of the complaint were tuberculosis, lymphoma, malaria and lupus. I underwent blood tests and ex-rays. These were showing no positive results but the fevers were continuing in their fortnightly pattern, with temperatures up to 42° and soaking night sweats. I was spending more time off from my lecturing job than at work. Eventually, my doctor had me admitted to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel for observation, as the new tests they wanted to do would be done quicker as an inpatient. I hadn’t spent a night in hospital since I was 6 months old and had bronchial pneumonia, an event I predictably don’t remember. In the hospital, where the care and facilities couldn’t have been better (I even had my own room, even though I am an NHS patient without any extra cover), I was given a PET scan and a lymph biopsy. When I’d initially had blood tests, the doctor had told me that there was no sign of lymphoma in the bloodstream, which had lulled me into a false sense of security. My hospital consultant was pretty sure I had Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and the biopsy/scan results confirmed this.

I had cancer. To be specific, I had Stage 3B Hodgkin’s, meaning that it had spread above and below my diaphragm and I was experiencing systematic symptoms. I was handed over to a new consultant, Dr Sylvia Montoto at Barts, who told me very clearly that, if left untreated, the disease would kill me. Treatment would involve an ABVD chemotherapy regime. This may have adverse effects – hair loss, nausea, sore gums, etc. – but the prognosis was very positive and I was told that the treatment cures over 80% of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma patients, with over 70%+ of those cured experiencing no recurrence of the disease. Nevertheless, being told you have a potentially fatal cancer is, to say the least, sobering.

Our lives are lived behind glass walls. We know that what lies beyond those glass walls is called Death although most of the times he doesn’t come close enough to the glass that we can see him, so it is easy to forget him or at least tell ourselves he’s some distance away. Sometimes, though, we hear his noises penetrate the glass or getting a feeling of his shadow passing; now and then he even comes close enough to be seen, he can even push his face up against the window. Most of us rather hope that by the time he is so close, we’ll be tired of living in our little glass house, maybe it’s too decrepit and old to be a joy to inhabit, so we’ll happily open the a window wide and let him in. Yet all the time we hear tales of how he’s smashed through to someone as an uninvited guest. I can’t say that I saw his face in 2012 but I certainly felt his presence, out there, closer than ever, perhaps I heard him breath. His breathing’s increase is the decrease of one’s own…

I am not sure that I fear Death, although the pain that one knows he can bring in his wake is a scary prospect. The sorrow he’ll give to those left who loved me is also an awful thought. Most horrible, to me, is the thought that he’ll come before I’ve had time to do all I wish to do with my life. I am a writer, I don’t think I’m written out yet and I certainly haven’t yet seen my creations bedded down in the world for a certain life beyond me, the only children I am likely to have are not yet thriving, so the prospect of death coming to call at this time in my life causes me to sing along with old Dock Boggs, “Oh, death, oh, death, can 't you spare me over till another year?”

Chemotherapy ain’t easy. Its bad reputation is well-earned. What I didn’t reckon on is how stealthy its miseries are. My first couple of sessions were made difficult by one of the drugs, Dacarbazine, giving me a severe bout of rigors - but the effects of the drugs soon wore off, my hair stayed sturdily in place and I was able to get out and about a fair amount in the weeks off from treatment (which was fortnightly, for six months; I was signed off university work for the duration). The more the treatment went on, the more impact it had on my body; energy levels decreased, the hair eventually fell out (leaving me looking like a raggedy scarecrow before I shaved it all off), the gums got sore and a woozy feeling of nausea stuck around. Unluckily for me, the antiemetic drugs weren’t entirely effective and the later treatments were usually concluded with severe bouts of vomiting.

The treatment is given through a drip and the chemo called Dacarbazine particularly took a while to go in, around 2/2.5 hours. I grew to dread this infusion. Sitting in the treatment room, somehow unable to read or listen to music, as this helpful poison slowly entered my body – it’s the worst position I have experience of being in. It was as if in those hours my life and my actual self were suspended. I managed to sleep through some of it (especially as the antihistamine they gave me to prevent the recurrence of the rigors was quite somniferous) but it was a deeply upsetting experience, eroding of all identity and faith in its moment, although these would appear again outside of that dreaded drip-time.

The treatment is given in blood cancer-specific day-wards at the hospital, ghastly and secret rooms in which the ailing sit in armchairs getting themselves infused with what they hope are helpful poisons. Some of the patients are old and weathered by the long-term effects of prolonged treatment; others are young and their eyes tell of the question as to why their glass windows have become menaced by the figure beyond this early in their lives. The wards are for the most part staffed by angels who couldn’t be gentler and kinder, a mercy indeed as without considerate attention, these rooms would be torture chambers.

My own visits to the wards were also alleviated by the companionship of my partner, Andrew, who always accompanied me on treatment days. Our relationship is only a couple of years old but he been the epitome of faithful and true. I wonder if I could have got through 2012 without his love and presence. When I hear the self-proclaimed Holy crew condemning and demeaning same-sex partnerships, I simply feel sorry for people who, supposedly above all others, should be servants of love but yet cannot see love-in-practice when it wears a form they’re prejudiced against. Compassion is a word often improperly used in contemporary life; in Andrew’s devotion, I knew compassion to literally mean co-suffering and I believe him when he says that every time I underwent the soul-destroying treatment, part of him was destroyed alongside me.

In late-October I had the final treatment of the prescribed regime. Over the following weeks my vitality has been returned. I am easing back into my university work and also hard-at-it writing a trilogy of new short plays, a commission from some actors. I had another PET scan in mid-December and, a week before Christmas, got a telephone call from Dr Montoto telling me that the scan shows that there is now no sign of the disease and that I am in “complete remission”. I am seeing a life beyond the cancer now, although it’s been such an intense ordeal that it’s sometimes hard to believe that, for now, the figure living beyond the glass is not imminent.

All of this is not to say that 2012 has been an altogether annus horribilis for me. I have seen devotion in the form of my lover and many of my friends; I saw the premier, six years after I wrote it, of my play Coward by the splendid and extremely talented folk at Just Some Theatre Company, and the seeds laid by their short tour of the play in 2012 are to flourish in an audio release of the play early in 2013 and a longer tour/possible London run of the play later in the year; I have seen some wonderful theatre and opera, although regrettably have not had the energy to write about it other than in short tweets; there was a new Bob Dylan album to wonder at. I have also had time to consider my life and life in general in a way I haven’t perhaps had the leisure to do since I had periods of unemployment in the 1990s; illness does allow one a certain temporary decadent aristocracy during which one can pursue a life of mind and contemplation which daily work undermines. Yet the longing to create is strong in me and I wouldn’t want any longer an intermission of vitality, so I am glad that it looks as if the aristocrat has now been deposed.

It is hard to sum up an experience like this, and I am leaving a great deal out of this perforce short account. I am not going to preach any lessons – perhaps being ill has allowed me to let go of the need to proselytise and for that if nothing else, I am eternally grateful to the circumstance. Perhaps going through a very serious illness gives one a privileged vision of life, or at least allows one to put certain things into perspective; perhaps many do this anyway, without brushing with the Reaper. It certainly allowed me to focus on that which makes me the same as everybody else – knowing myself to be a being whose stay on this earth has limits, that at any moment I might suddenly be thrown from my hobby-horse and encounter that lurker in the land beyond the glass. I could now worry that my cancer will return, or that my body will betray me in some other way, or will be otherwise defeated; yet in my vulnerability I’m not any different from you or anybody else, no matter how apparently healthy a person has always been. We all breath a numbered series of breaths, have terminable heartbeats.

I will take a small liberty and encourage you, if you do not already, to acknowledge Death, as I surely now do. He is for all of us a certain future companion, the caller stealing through the window to be with us in the last dance of our earthly lives. Until then - God, the fates or medical science willing – we’ll have other companions and who knows how many other rounds to dance.

Visiting Bethlehem

There is some historical evidence (in Josephus and Tacitus) that Yeshua-bar-Yosef ended his life in Jerusalem, given they mention him being sentenced to death by the Roman governor based there, Pontius Pilate. The birth of Yeshua-bar-Yosef at Bethlehem is quite another matter – it is not mentioned outside of the Gospels, except in apocryphal material which looks even more like mythology than they do. There is certainly poetic meaning and no small beauty to be found in the Gospel accounts of the Nativity but as an adult I have never given much credence to them being literal accounts of the birth of a historical man (the same goes for the virgin birth; personally I quite like the Pantera story whilst acknowledging there's no evidence for its historicity). Yet the clearly mythological tone of the Nativity accounts has not prevented Christians, from the earliest times, of mapping out mythic events on the actual land of Palestine and marking places in or near Bethlehem as the site of these events. 

A trip from Jerusalem to see these sites in Bethlehem today means a traveller encountering another, far from mythical and all too contemporary story, as Bethlehem lies behind the Separation Wall and visitors must pass through the Gilo checkpoint into the West Bank. We'd booked a half-day coach trip for the visit and our Israeli coach-driver dropped us off at the steel-walled and iron grilled checkpoint which we then passed through to be met by a Palestinian driver on the other side (Israeli citizens are not permitted to travel into the Palestinian territories). The checkpoint is ugly and oppressive but the passage through into the West Bank was quick and simple enough. Driven then towards Jerusalem, we then got a chance to see a the great amount of graffiti which has been done on the Palestinian side, including a dove in a bullet proof vest by Banksy. The Wall on the Israeli side is as your proverbial whitewashed tomb. I will say more about the Wall further down.

We visited three Christian sites in Bethlehem. First, the Milk Grotto purports to be the cave in which the Holy Family rested on the Flight into Egypt. Legend has it that the walls of this cave were once red but a drop of milk from the breast of "the Virgin" spilt onto the floor here and everything was miraculously changed to white. The chalky walls of the cavern are now scraped and the dust sold to women desperate to conceive a child; this small business and the site itself is run by the Franciscans. Our guide was quite serious that this miraculous property of helping conception did indeed exist in the cave's chalk; I remain to be convinced but if it does, I think it's a poor show for the Franciscans to be charging for it. The Grotto itself is a not particularly interesting interior and the modernist chapel constructed alongside it is very featureless; more whitewashed walls…

Nearby another grotto claims to be the cave in which the shepherds were visited by the Angel of the Lord, telling them that the messiah had been born. A small Church has been raised in what is now known as the Shepherd's Fields, The Sanctuary of the Shepherds. This is a small, granite dome the interior of which is decorated by the most tasteless, tacky frescos imaginable – the kinds of things one sees on cheap Christmas cards, with pseudo Pre-Raphaelite angels bearing down on dopey shepherds surrounded by docile sheep; in one of the frescos, an idiot boy shepherd leaps for joy; there's an entirely predictable nativity scene. The Church is in peaceful and well-kept grounds and this is not a bad place to spend some time in quiet contemplation – but how much better would it be if the announcement of the birth of Jesus, who in the gospels comes across as a most unpredictable and positively dangerous character, wasn't being celebrated in such a conventional and anodyne way in the decoration. The grotto itself is a pokey interior decorated by nativity cribs. Inside whilst we were there were a group of South Korean pilgrims being spoken to about the angelic announcement and how it heralds a message about the replacing of the "stony heart" with the fully beating, compassionate human heart which life in Christ can give us. I found this message rather affecting, and was pleased to be reminded of Dylan's lyric Property of Jesus. From the manufactured peace of the Shepherd's field one gets a good view of a nearby Israeli settlement, a kind of monstrously growing, drab Middle Eastern Milton Keynes. 

The Church of the Nativity itself is an impressive if ramshackle edifice. One enters, via Manger Square, through a doorway known as the "Gate of Humility" – as only children, dwarfs and midgets wouldn't have to stoop to get through it. Inside one is faced with an impressive if barren Nave, in the floor of which some Byzantine mosaics are exposed, a remnant of the earliest church in this location,  built by Constantine's mother Helena. The altar of the church is in stark contract with the nave, a gaudy Greek Orthodox explosion of icons, crosses, cencers and paintings. Beneath this is the Grotto of the Nativity itself, the space claimed to be the stable in which the Christ-child was born. 

The Grotto is quite an unpleasant space, in terms of it being thronging with pilgrims and worshippers and therefore cramped and uncomfortable. It has little formal elegance, with the specific locations of various events scattered around and made impossible to see for more than a glimpse as they are covered by the prostrate and praying bodies of the faithful. A silver star marks the spot on which the Virgin supposedly dropped Our Lord, perhaps suggesting that he is a kind of Lone Ranger deputy of the Lord sent to sort, Western style, the bad men out. Given it is such a small and low-ceilinged space and given the throng inside, it is easy to imagine the chaos that must have ensued when the Magi, their servants and the shepherds all barged in to give their praises at the birth; it’s a wonder the baby Jesus didn't suffocate. 

Next door to the Basilica is the 19^th century Franciscan Church and Cloister of Saint Catherine, the distinguishing feature of which is a large brass showing the Tree of Jesse near the main door. In the cloister, a statue of Saint Jerome presides; high on the cloister wall, bullet holes from the 2002 siege are still visible. Coming back into Manger Square, I was struck by the pall that hangs about the place – it's a World Heritage Site but there's an unease in the air; I later read that the Basilica is in a parlous state of repair which the custodians, infighting amongst themselves, fail to do anything about. Perhaps in this way it is an apt memorial to the birth of a message of Universal Love – falling to bits as folk argue amongst themselves. 

Getting back into Israel from the West Bank is not quite so simple as getting in. One travels back through the Gilo checkpoint and to do so, one must join the queue. Most of the people here are Palestinians, who might well have land, work or family on one side and home on the other; they probably have to do this chore of queuing daily. It took a good 40 minutes to get through the checkpoint, as each of the Palestinians much present their papers (a ragged sheet) and undergo fingerprint recognition before the demonstrably bored young Israeli soldiers let them through. One young woman, in the midst of her family, didn't quite know how to finesse the fingerprint procedure – she kept putting her hand on the reader and something about this was wrong; the Israeli soldier grunted and ordered her to do it again. Again and again. She became exasperated and frustrated, clearly in need of some guidance which was not forthcoming from the checkpoint guard; her family tried to help her but it took her a good few tries before she got it right. This was an unpleasant and humiliating moment for her and for her family and I felt embarrassed to see it, especially given the fact that myself and my partner walked through vaguely flashing our British passports, waved through with disinterest by the guard. We were then waved onto a bus for Jerusalem which was also carrying a large part of the Palestinians who had just travelled through the checkpoint. A young Palestinian guy heard our voices and wanted to talk with us in English, seeming very pleased at this chance encounter but before we could engage with him, a taxi driver got on and dragged those of us on the Bethlehem excursion off and into his cab. I wish I'd have stayed on and done the trip with my fellows in the checkpoint queue.

Travelling through the checkpoint reminded me of the weeks I spent directing a couple of musicals with prisoners in Maidstone prison. Twice a day we'd have to go back and forth through security, as well we might, given we'd chosen to work with convicted criminals, many of whom had committed heinous and violent crimes. No matter the realities on the ground in Israel, who could think it not a shame (I use the word with force) that ordinary Palestinians are forced to go through such a daily palaver with moments of humiliation merely because of acts of terrorism the vast majority of them have nothing to do with? That a country might become a kind of holding camp for swathes of its population has to be unsustainable, whatever the rationales. This walling of the Palestinians casts a vast shadow over Israeli consumer society, darkening all of the shopping malls and the beach parties and the markets and the essentially European infrastructure. Where this leaves the Holy sites is a nagging question – Mere tourist traps? Part of the factional, sectarian problem? Remnants and reminders of another Way in the midst of a fallen world? Or all of these things in a complex mesh? 

Jerusalem and its Sites of Mythic Events...

My partner and I spent 7 days in Israel this in late August/early September, on vacation as the Americans would say or was it on Pilgrimage as a Medievalist might say? One thing is for sure, we weren't on a crusade. It is such a strange, alluring and complex part of the world that I want to write a blog or two on it, and this is the first; fragmented thoughts and scattered insights. Others will follow if I get the time…

We arrived at Tel Aviv Ben Gurion Airport and, after my partner faced some reasonably stringent questioning (they didn't seem that bothered by me), we got a car to Jerusalem. Our first four nights were spent in The Holy City, and our first morning there was spent walking the Via Dolorosa. 

The Via Dolorosa is a walk through the winding streets of Old Jerusalem, which is still a walled city, with seven gates; we entered in through Damascus Gate. The Via Dolorosa supposedly traces the journey of Jesus from his condemnation by Pilate to his internment in the tomb. Each of the famous Stations of the Cross are marked on the route, some with a simple round medallion on the wall, some with a chapel or sanctuary. It's a fascinating walk to take, both for the sites  - some of the chapels are exquisite (for example the Church of the Flagellation with its beautiful stained glass and Crown of Thorns ceiling, or the Chapel of the Third Station, with its compelling paintings)  - and also the characters: the local traders trying every which way to make a dollar from the tourists & pilgrims, the former stopping to take photographs and the latter mostly in groups, singing hymns at each Station. This heady mix of money-making and tourism with sanctity and religiosity is the most palpable and peculiar flavour of Jerusalem, and it would be wrong to wish for it to be any other way. It's kind of a theme park where people go not simply for fun but for ecstasy and grace. I can't say I felt, at the time, any great spiritual affect – but being there is to be swept up into this very real and very present place which is at the same time very unreal and very Eternal. It is a kind of place where time and eternity meet but the effect of that happening is not what you might expect. One thing is for sure, it could only be Jerusalem.

I have a lot of time for the Gospels as Imaginative Art and I've done a fair bit of reading around the historical Yeshua-bar-Yosef, the various theories as to what really happened if any of it did, the "reality" behind the Myth. I suppose my take on this is relatively unusual, because for the Myth to work in me (and at times it does), there doesn't need to have been a literal reality. The Jesus of the Gospels exists in the words on the page and in the Imagination of the reader. Whether a first century Jewish holy man was the reality behind that Myth isn't essential, any more than whether some Theban tyrant really stands somewhere behind Oedipus. Of course, someone came up with the Parables, which seem to me quite extraordinary literary achievements, and someone stands behind the ideas; if Saul/Paul of Tarsus or some other early follower had made it all up, they would surely have credited themselves with the parables and ideas and claimed they were themselves Messiah; so the background figure I suspect strongly was a real person. This ambiguity I have as to the historicity of the figure is an ambiguity which is essentially writerly. As a writer myself, I might base this or that character or situation on a real person or event; I wouldn't want anyone to get too interested in the reality, as the story as I have written it is The Thing. The kick I get from finding out about the life of Yeshua-bar-Yosef is in seeing what the writers of the Gospels – clearly men of literary genius – did with it to turn it into this incredible Myth. That Yeshua-bar-Yosef was something of a literary and philosophical genius himself is an added layer of intrigue…

But how to approach Jerusalem, where real places are presented as mythic ones? The Via Dolorosa ends inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which contains not only the supposed Sepulchre of the Resurrection but also the rock of Calvary and the place on which Jesus was laid to be perfumed and shrouded after death, the Stone of Unction. There are contested theories as to whether these places are the actual places, if the actual events took place (which is, to some more than others, a big if). I am made a little queasy by real land being made mythic in this way; the mapping of Imaginative space onto actual space kind of bothers me. Yet this sceptic wasn't always in place. Underneath an elaborate Greek Orthodox altar and glass case, one is presented by a rock which does indeed look like a skull. One doesn't see the rock until quite late as you approach the altar and, at that moment, I felt a palpable shock. One has to bend down in order to reach through and touch it and there in that moment I wondered "What will happen? Will some vision course through my mind, splitting it open? Will my heart burst with the kind of love St Teresa felt in her ecstasies? Will I be taken on a Trip of mind-altering, cosmic dimensions?" But it was just a cold rock I felt with my sense of touch, as it would be, and those not blessed with a spiritual moment or cursed with a schizophrenic one are left with their imagination to build on this place in that brief moment of touch and after, in contemplation and creativity. 

The Holy Sepulchre is more difficult to get one's head around. It is easy to believe that someone was crucified on that rock two millennia ago; it is somewhat harder to swallow that on the nearby site of the now elaborately covered Holy Sepulchre that same man came back to life. It is easy to take this in a myth – Tiresias changed his sex and Leda was raped by a swan, of course I agree with those story elements and can just as soon agree that Jesus came back to life; it is easy to take as a metaphor – after all, you can't kill an idea. But as a historical moment? This is where one needs faith and unless you have this with you already at the Holy Sepulchre, I doubt you'll find it in the Aedicule of the Sepulchre itself. Pilgrims and tourists are harried and herded, about 12 or 13 at a time, into the Aedicule and given a very limited time in the actual space (you pass through one chamber into another). There's little chance here for the trails of mystery and awe to weave themselves around one's mind. Perhaps thinking about the place later? In that case, might you as well not have gone, just Imagined? The literal presence of the places simply leads one back to the Imagination, where such events really take place. William Blake posited that all events take place in the Imagination…

Behind the Sepulchre there is an ante-room with a battered old altar and you can pass through this to the Tomb of Joseph of Arimethea, which unlike the Sepulchre has no ornate or any other decoration and therefore has rather more atmosphere (not many people venture in here, as an added plus). In this barren, unlit cave, crouching down, one can get strange intimations; you could believe that out of sight, out of mind,  a wondrously strange thing might happen here… The lack of decoration, the lack of light, the lack of others presents the Imagination with opportunities…

In retrospect, the walk along the Via Dolorosa and around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was an extraordinarily special thing to have done – whether or not one subscribes any truth to the legends about these places. These are rich sites from which have sprung stories and from which stories can and will continue to spring. The place of the skull though – that is a place in your head, and it is there ultimately that the Saviour will be crucified and might Rise Again; is it there all other mythic events, about Jesus and anything else, will ultimately take place… 

The crucifixions and resurrections that go on in your own mind will bleed and come back to life in the reality we share, which is after all the site of the meeting of minds.