B90: Mysteries

I have another London memory. A nice, strange one. I already wrote a little post about the South Bank, but not specifically about the National Theatre. 

Mostly, when I went to the National Theatre, it was to the Olivier and the Lyttelton. But around, I think, Easter 2000, a group of us went to see The Mysteries at the Cottesloe (now Dorfman), which is much more of a ruddy bloody brave space than the more traditional and grand Olivier and Lyttelton.

I was not entirely a willing attendee, had been a little dragooned into it. It was the story of the Bible. It was three plays in one day - morning, afternoon and evening. For the story of the Bible.

But it was a version of the medieval plays adapted by Tony Harrison, who I was already a fan of. The first play began, I guess at around 10.30am, with a stark naked Adam and Eve (played by Joanna Page, I've just looked up, years before Gavin and Stacey). I guess that woke everybody up.

The cast was distinguished, some still there from the acclaimed, original, 1985 production. Jack Shepherd, David Bradley, Don Warrington, Sue Johnston, Trevor Laird, William Gaunt - all faces you'd recognise if you saw them.

And it was musical, and the music was folk. John Tams, a folk musician/actor perhaps best known for being the folk singer in 'Sharpe', was the co-ordinator.

So, actually, I found myself hugely enjoying it. But it was hard work, and there was a lot of standing and sitting on the floor. And I'm very bad at sitting on a floor. 

I was in the middle of my biggest period of musical discovery, only having started buying CDs rather than tapes (there was a much bigger selection of CDs available by the late 90s) a year or so earlier, I was soaking up the history of rock and folk which didn't go straight down the middle.

So, that was a big Nick Drake time for me, and going from that, a big Fairport Convention, Richard and Linda Thompson time.

'I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight' and, particularly, 'Walking on a Wire' from 'Shoot out the Lights' were massive for me that year - Linda Thompson's stunning, clear voice. I'd read about them all a lot too - Linda Thompson who'd had a relationship of sorts with Drake himself (he might as well have been a mix of Greta Garbo and Elvis as far as I was concerned). She'd been married to Richard, and I knew about the legendary misery of their last tour, and how she'd pretty much disappeared from music after that, indeed, she'd had a condition which meant she couldn't sing. I knew all that.

And yet, here she was, unmistakeably, singing, accompanied by John Tams at this mystery play.

I think we must have had a pint at lunch after the first play. A big mistake for me at that time, not yet in control of my rapid nauseating headaches. So, during the second one, especially with all the sitting on the floor, I began to take a turn. Yet, at one point, out of nowhere, Linda Thompson, who'd just sang a song, was sitting next to me on the floor.

That's it really. It was just so surreal - a person, who, at that moment where I was learning so much about music history and treating it as almost mythical, and not yet understanding that people are just people who get on with their lives, could not have been more iconic to me, just sitting on the floor next to me.

Sadly, I couldn't last the pace. I remember the second play ended with the crucifixion, and the band played the magnificent Richard and Linda Thompson song 'Calvary Cross' and I was able to enjoy that, but then, in the second break, it was clear I needed to go home. So I never found out how the Bible ends.