Goat & Monkey, in association with Southwark Playhouse, presentsReverence: A tale of Abelard and Heloise
by Gillian Clarke
August 28th 2007 - September 22nd 2007
Show starts: 19:30 (15:00 Sat mats)
Running time: 90 minutes
"Then there is no more left than this..."
In the blackened heart of catacombs long forgotten, by the stuttering and vapid light of one hundred broken bulbs, shadowy figures lurch from the gloom to re-enact an ancient tragedy, the tale of Abelard and his Heloise...
Reverence is a site-sympathetic promenade style performance, opening the new Southwark Playhouse under London Bridge station.
Please Note
> The show is an indoor promenade performance. Due to the nature of the piece, audience members should be prepared to walk, stand and/or kneel on uneven surfaces, often in dim lighting. There are not many opportunities for sitting down.
> The performance space is cold so please dress warmly.
> There is no storage for bags and large bags will not be able to be taken into the performance.
> The show contains adult content. The performance is not recommended for those under 14 years of age.
Access
> Please inform Southwark Playhouse of your access requirements at least 48 hours before you attend the performance by phoning 020 7620 3494.
"The emotional impact of these beautifully sculpted, barely lit and flickering scenes is as potent as a shot of absinthe."
Time Out on ‘The Ghost Sonata’
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Creative Team
Director |
- Joel Scott |
Producer |
- Sally Gibson |
Designers |
- Patrick Burnier & |
Lighting |
- Dan Large |
Sound |
- Becky Smith |
Supported by
Reviews
Hot on the heels of Howard Brenton's In Extremis at the Globe comes another look at the famous 12th-century lovers Abelard and Heloise. But if Brenton's play looked at the clash of reason and religious fundamentalism as the lovers' espousal of Aristotle and Plato threatened the church, here the clash is of romance and religion in a fevered hothouse of fleshly and heavenly desires. The only nod to the intellectual is that - like peeping Toms - we first glimpse Abelard and Heloise making love through the gaps in the books on the library stacks. Heloise is clearly teacher's pet.
Full of cries and whispers and the sound of self-flagellation, Goat and Monkey's promenade production oozes atmosphere and makes terrific use of the cavernous, vaulted ceiling spaces under London Bridge station (the new premises of Southwark Playhouse). Like the Shunt Vaults nearby, this is an astounding space, and one that Goat and Monkey use very astutely. Even the general atmosphere of fetid dampness is turned to advantage, first in the casual murder by drowning of a young novitiate who has succumbed to the pleasures of the flesh, and later in Heloise's virginal bedroom, where Canon Fulbert keeps his niece like a doll, bringing her out now and again to finger at his pleasure. The entire show drips with forbidden desires, sexual jealousy, religious repression, and blood.
We the audience, cloaked in supplied robes and cowls like medieval monks, not only become extras in the show but are implicated in the lovers' tragedy: we are the congregation at the forced secret marriage, the watchers who do nothing. Director Joel Scott - growing in confidence since Goat and Monkey's last show, Ghost Sonata - plays with us, creating moments of disorientation that cow us into submission but also gives us brilliant images that give distance and perspective. None is more beautiful or desolate than our final glimpse of the lovers - theatre's equivalent of a lingering long shot - which has the broken, bloody Abelard and an unreachable Heloise separated by a field of poppies.
It is these moments that linger in the mind and cloak the fact that this production is essentially a promenade play - and a slightly plodding, linear one at that - rather than a genuinely site- specific or sympathetic production that is forging new theatrical vocabularies of gesture and space. But no matter; it's an intriguing evening and a reminder that Goat and Monkey is a young company of particular promise.
Lyn Gardner - The Guardian (3 Stars) Read Full Review
However grim the subject matter, there’s something very jolly about promenade theatre, especially when dressing up’s involved. Goat and Monkey’s new piece, based on the story of Abelard and Heloise, is a response to the damp, dark recesses beyond Southwark Theatre’s appealing new studio space under the arches off Tooley Street. It proves the perfect site for investigating the rigours of medieval monastic life as each member of the audience is given their very own monk’s habit to wear. One’s colleagues take on a different shape. There goes Brother Nightingale clutching a very modern notebook. There go Brother Nathan and Sisters Alfree, Gardner, Hemming and Marvin. Less comfortably, we are forced to become complicit in the events that follow.
Inevitably, in the hands of Goat and Monkey the story takes on a different spin from Howard Brenton’s version at Shakespeare’s Globe nearby. Instead of ideas and debate, there is Abelard and Heloise’s passion for each other versus the church’s obsession with the sins of the flesh. The telling of the story is quite straightforward, as it might be told in a theatre. The difference is that we are on the move expertly guided by other monks. Like suspicious clerics, we peer through bookshelves as Abelard and Heloise meet in secret. We are witnesses as a drugged, reluctant Heloise is married off to Abelard. Most memorably, we watch as Heloise is forced to bring a napkin stained with her menstrual blood to her uncle, Fulbert, who sniffs at it lasciviously. The fashionable combination of polythene and blood allows us to see through the ceiling to the soiled napkins from her previous periods dangling above. Fortunately, there is only the smell of incense.
It’s an impressive launch for the new Southwark Playhouse and will surely prove popular with those theatregoers who seek experiences more than plays. If the emotion of the story doesn’t always survive, Goat and Monkey create a final potent image of separation using the full depth of the building as the wounded Abelard lies slumped on the floor watched by Heloise from afar as a gate slowly closes physically separating them for ever.
Jane Edwardes - Time Out (4 Stars) Read Full Review
A word of warning - wear a stout pair of shoes for this show, the first in Southwark Playhouse's temporary new home. Flip-flops are utterly inadequate for the dank, muddy tunnels beneath London Bridge station through which this promenade production will lead you, often in semi-darkness.
Yet the dripping shadows and claustrophobic vaults are a wonderfully apt backdrop for the story of Abelard and Heloise, the free-thinking 12th-century lovers and intellectuals whose relationship ended in tragedy thanks to the vengeful intervention of Heloise's uncle. Today they are known most for the extraordinarily passionate letters they wrote to each other throughout their life.
Goat And Monkey theatre company includes founder members of Punchdrunk, whose site-specific production of Faust wooed audiences earlier this year. The latter's atmospheric, art installation feel is stamped all over this show, but rather than having to chase the story cat and mouse style, here the audience becomes part of it.
Dressed in cowls, you are initiated as young monks into the same order as Abelard and, like his young, jealous and tormented friend Thomas (played by Michael Cox), spy on his relationship with his young pupil Heloise within the bowels of the monastery through gaps in his library walls. This is a place of whispers, secrets, conspiracies and danger: dimly lit tunnels open up before your eyes; bodies hang above your head; eerie noises crackle within the walls. In one extraordinary scene in Heloise's bedroom, a transparent ceiling slowly reveals the evidence of her uncle's unhealthy obsession with her.
Director Joel Scott is guilty of exploiting the setting at the expense of some of the more interesting parts of Abelard and Heloise's story. Certainly Gillian Clarke's script gives short shrift to Abelard's groundbreaking intellectual arguments and to the flesh, blood and eloquent sensuality of their actual relationship (we only see them alone together once). Moreover, Heloise's proto-feminist ideas feel more bolted on than properly served. Yet the vicious momentum of their violent persecution by an enemy within reaps rich dramatic rewards.
Claire Allfree - Metro (4 Stars) Read Full Review
Around nine centuries ago, French scholar Peter Abelard and his beautiful, young pupil Heloise fell in love.
Exploiting to the full the dramatic potential of Southwark Playhouse’s atmospheric and stylish new venue, writer Gillian Clarke’s retelling of their tale, directed by Joel Scott, underscores its modernity, yet takes us right back to the chilling, medieval horror and complexity of what they endured.
As we wander rapt through cavernous vaults in this promenade performance, we are not just an audience, but religious novices, peering fearfully into the gloom. The lovers’ tragedy is not remote, but a trauma shaking our own community.
Pieter Lawman’s Abelard is fiery, wiry and burning with passionate intelligence. His Heloise (Leandra Ashton) is more sensual, but just as bright and a feminist opponent of blind obedience.
Their great ally is the reassuring, jesting but ultimately tragic Odile (Ian Summers). Those who undo them range from the querulous acolyte Thomas (Michael Cox) to the murderous William (Jason Cheater) and the lusting Canon Fulbert (Patrick Driver).
As Heloise’s jealous uncle, Fulbert deals the cruellest blows to Abelard, not just denying him his manhood, but denying him intellectual influence and ensuring posterity would remember him rather as a doomed lover than the greatest philosopher of his time.
Barbara Lewis - The Stage Read Full Review
Abelard and Heloise are on their way to becoming regulars on the Southwark stage. A few weeks ago the 12th-century lovers were to be found at Shakespeare’s Globe in Howard Brenton’s play In Extremis.
Now, in Gillian Clarke’s new drama Reverence, they scurry through the vaults beneath London Bridge station, christening Southwark Playhouse’s remarkable new venue.
Clarke’s play was written specifically for this space and she and the company, Goat and Monkey, work towards making the audience and the building part of the drama. The lovers’ story is played out among an oppressive religious order to which Abelard is affiliated in his capacity as teacher and logician.
And the company uses the damp, chilly vaults to good effect, filling them with whispering, hooded figures to create a brooding atmosphere.
We, the audience, are conscripted as novices. Cloaked in black habits, we are shepherded through dimly lit passages to lurk in corners, eavesdrop in corridors, perch on wooden boxes or kneel on the floor during a grim “purification” ceremony.
This is disorientating and effective, even if it does mean you spot the odd monk clutching a handbag or a bicycle helmet.
And the director Joel Scott makes good use of the space, choreographing the story around the tunnels and arches, using lighting and sound ingeniously to create eerie tableaux.
But the evening falls short because the dramatic use of space takes over, at the expense of the actual story. The context outweighs the content. The time spent shuffling from site to site slows down the action and the script itself lacks subtlety and even clarity.
Brenton’s play presented us with two people as intoxicated by ideas as by each other and conveyed the excitement and power of revolutionary thinking. That aspect of the story is missing here. Abelard is referred to as a daring thinker, but the nature of his unorthodoxy is never explored.
Neither is Heloise’s revulsion at her uncle’s demand that she marry Abelard. The historical context is vague, the theological debate is thin, the narrative is bitty and confusing and the confrontations have an edge of melodrama. The cast is strong, led by Pieter Lawman as a wild and wiry Abelard.
But when you start to notice how cold your feet are, it means the story is losing its grip.
Sarah Hemming - Financial Times Read Full Review
Mine is a weird job. There I was, dressed in a monk’s black habit by cowled actors. Then there I was, joining similarly hooded spectators on a two-hour sortie through the damp catacombs that lie below London Bridge station. And all along I was wondering why a play about Abelard and Heloise demanded a sartorial sacrifice akin to putting on wings so as to enjoy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Well, I’d dress as a fairy and tramp through the New Forest if duty called and a fine production was promised. But Goat and Monkey, as the producing company is called, are surely too enchanted with the Southwark Playhouse, as these old brick tunnels have been renamed. They offer striking visual moments – Abelard bemoaning his trimmed scrotum beside an antique arch while black bars close on a distant Heloise – but their script sometimes sounds like a Latin-English phrasebook laboriously assembled by a Hungarian.
Anyway, we all stepped over a grille through which a drowned monk posthumously peered, trouped beneath a hanged nun, perched in the church where Heloise and Abelard were wed, and so on. Every creepy location had been carefully and often ambitiously prepared, sometimes too much so. Why were the principals canoodling on a bridge lined by books that obstructed the eyes? I removed a volume, which turned out to be Secrets by Danielle Steel, but that didn’t help.
What was really needed was language that didn’t obstruct the ears. You would never have guessed that Pieter Lawman’s scrawny, intense Abelard was a great thinker, because we heard nothing of his ideas, or that Leandra Ashton as a pretty Heloise was intellectually precocious. Instead, he’s melodramatically badmouthed by Jason Cheater as the venomous reactionary William and she’s incestuously assailed by Patrick Driver as her slimy uncle Fuibert; and all to lines such as (from pregnant Heloise after she’s faked menstruation): “I will not have my bodily fluids paraded”, and (from sneery Fuibert): “evil lurks in female passages; there’s no woman in whom the Devil does not reside.”
Did I also hear Lawman say: “I wouldn’t want to peak too early in your expectation of me”, and Ashton reply: “That is a mantra you should repeat every night before you come to bed”? Along with lines about Fuibert “suffocating aspirations” and Heloise promising Abelard they’ll “find new theories together”? Yes, I think so. Goat and Monkey say they want their audiences to stumble into the actors’ environment, “unwittingly causing collisions to occur and further perpetuating the growth of this micro habitat”. Well, I don’t know what I perpetuated, but I sure felt concussed by those unwitting collisions.
Benedict Nightingale - The Times Read Full Review
Southwark Playhouse has moved. Its new home is a warren of arcades carved out of the massive viaduct that carries commuter trains into London Bridge station. Its latest show is a ‘promenade performance’ about Peter Abelard, the thinker and cleric, and Eloise, the thinker and sex bomb. ‘Promenade’ means the audience don’t just sit there being entertained, they have to work. We gathered in a damp dark hall at the start of the show while the cast of black-robed monks milled about muttering ominously. We were split into small groups and herded into a vestry where we each received a hooded cloak and a belt of cord. Togged up, we filed into a gloomy pit where a pool of water shimmered in the half-light. Audience and players were now identically dressed. Creepy. Patrolling monks adjusted our gowns. An abbot mounted the rostrum and began hectoring us about sin and damnation. ‘Paucorum improbitas est multorum calamitas,’ he thundered. He made us repeat it three times. Loose translation: ‘A naughty minority can create nuisance levels out of all proportion to their numbers.’ Too true. Then, a weird ceremony of sado-Christening. A monk stripped to his undies and was thrust deep into the water by the abbot, who glared at us with the malevolent leer of a traffic warden. The queue shuffled forwards and a second monk was peeled and rinsed.
As the line advanced I began fiddling with my robes, worried that I too was about to be slam-dunked for Jesus. But the third monk was accused of some unforgiveable crime and instead of being blessed he was drowned. Thank God for that. We shuffled out past his white body slumped in the holy water. Thus the play developed as a set of tableaux performed in gruesome locations. Through veils of cobwebs we watched Eloise breathlessly seduce Abelard. Beneath a putrid arch we saw Eloise’s uncle demand that she produce her menstrual tissue as proof of her virginity. The brickwork dripped appropriately.
In a lobby rattling with the clunk-clunk of trains we peered at Abelard being flagellated by a grinning acolyte, and finally we were greeted by the sight of a castrated Abelard strung from a pig-hook while his groin wept gore. Sounds original. Presentation-wise it is, but the Mills & Boon script is full of high Victorian sentence and the acting has too much huff-and-puff. And it’s no fun being badgered and nudged through squelching corridors by look-at-me actors fussing around and being oh-so-terribly-medieval and monkish. A laugh for the performers but to the audience it seems a weird and vengeful prank.
Lloyd Evans - The Spectator Read Full Review
OPENED only last week, the new Southwark Playhouse is the ideal space in which to host Goat and Monkey's grim and complex version of the medieval French tale of Abelard and Heloise.
After donning black hooded monks' habits and being ushered into what appears to be a bleak underground cavern - the new theatre space is actually a series of dimly lit and somewhat dank railway arches underneath London Bridge station - the audience is integrated into the monks' world through an ominous religious ceremony, complete with choral music and Latin chanting.
It is here that we first are shockingly introduced to the brutality of the church elders, when one young monk, about to be baptised into the brotherhood, is drowned at the hands of a cardinal in the baptism pool after admitting to tasting the sins of the flesh with a woman.
Paradoxically, the powers that be see these violent acts as necessary to maintain purity within their sacred walls. And it is this struggle, between humanity and love and religious piety and power, that forms the basis of the play.
Moving through the dusty passages and under damp arches, the young and brilliant scholar Abelard (Pieter Lawman) and his star pupil Heloise (Leandra Ashton) steal glances and meet in secret between library bookshelves as their invisible audience peers through, watching their every move.
Having been discovered by a cowering student of the brotherhood and married off unwillingly by her obsessive uncle Canon Fulbert to Abelard in secret ceremony, Heloise's journey turns from bad to worse, culminating in exile to a nunnery. This poor young woman seems to have chosen the worst place on earth to fall in love.
During the play, we are told that Abelard is one of the foremost radical thinkers of his age, so why does he shun debate, meaning that we never learn of his ideas? And why is Heloise so opposed to marrying her love? Is she thinking of his future career in the church? Or is this the key to Abelard's unorthodox thinking? These, unfortunately, are questions that are never answered.
But the emotional impact of the piece more than makes up for the slight lack of coherence in the script and, in the penultimate scene, where we see Abelard hanging from chains, his crotch stained with blood and gore at the hands of the jealous Fulbert, the guilt in the audience is almost tangible as we realise that we eavesdroppers have been complicit in his downfall all along.
As we move out of the theatre space, shuffling past the cinematic tableau of Abelard slumped in a candle-lit archway, weeping for all his worth, it makes for an uncomfortable feeling. But, then, guilt was always what the canons used to perpetuate their power in the first place. It's not easy on the emotions to know that we, too, have been sucked in.
Katie Lambert - Morning Star Read Full Review