The Messiah Read online

  Patrick Barlow

  THE MESSIAH

  With additional material by

  Julian Hough, Jude Kelly and John Ramm

  NICK HERN BOOKS

  London

  www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

  Contents

  Foreword

  Original Production

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Characters

  The Messiah

  About the Author

  Copyright and Performing Rights Information

  Foreword

  Patrick Barlow

  I wrote the first draft of The Messiah on the island of Iona, just off Mull in the Scottish Highlands. Someone told me it might be a good place to write a Nativity play.

  Iona was where St Columba arrived in 563 to convert the heathen Picts. Nowadays there is a proper ferry with a restaurant, lounges and car deck, but in 1982 only a small motorboat could make the journey and only when the sea wasn’t rough. I took the long trip in November when the seas were wild and far-off lightning criss-crossed the sky. Already I’d spent two nights in a B&B in Fionnphort, waiting for the tide to drop and gazing at the grey stone abbey and pure white sands of Iona tantalisingly in the distance. The white black-rocked sands where sixty-eight monks were massacred by Vikings on Christmas Eve in 986. It is still called Martyrs Bay. The massacred monks, they say, made the great work of illuminated gospels, the Manuscript of Columba, or Book of Kells.

  The seas dropped sufficiently and the little pale blue boat arrived to take us across the churning waters of Iona Sound to the island. We pulled ourselves aboard and the driver helped lug my heavy case of books into the bottom of the boat. As I jumped in I saw a nun, grey and white-robed, in green wellies, staring at me with a broad jaw and determined look.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded. ‘What on earth’s in these ridiculous heavy cases?’

  ‘They’re books for a play I’m writing,’ I replied.

  ‘How many books?’

  ‘Heaps.’

  ‘Play about what?’

  ‘A kind of – ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nativity play,’ I replied to the deep brown eyes.

  ‘Well you won’t need books for that.’

  ‘Won’t I?’

  ‘The island will give you everything.’

  ‘What will it give me?’

  She held on to her flapping habit as the outboard spluttered and the little boat lurched and swung out towards the island.

  I thought she hadn’t heard.

  I said again: ‘What will it give me?’

  She stared out to the island then back to me.

  She said: ‘The veil is very thin on Iona.’

  The boat lurched. We clung to the sides. Spray hit our faces.

  Was she talking to me?

  ‘Sorry, I don’t understand.’

  She looked at me rather puzzled. She said it again. Emphasising each word with clear-cut precision:

  ‘The

  veil

  is

  very

  thin

  on

  Iona.’

  I tried to write my play. I spent days at it. I battled through my books and got nowhere. Every afternoon, in the fading light, I marched round the island listening to my brand-new Walkman cassette player. I had two cassettes. Handel’s Messiah which I’d never heard before. Particularly ‘Comfort Ye My People’ which I played over and over and over, my boots sinking into the sodden turf. The other cassette I bought at the Oban gift shop. This was The Best of Ossian. Particularly ‘The Road to Drumleman’ which I played over and over and over too. I marched on, leaning into the stinging wind, sloshing my feet in time to the music.

  One day on a bright early morning, the sister came knocking at my door.

  ‘How’s your play going?’

  ‘Very very hard,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know where I am.’

  ‘Come along.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘We’re going for a walk!’

  ‘But I haven’t even – ’

  ‘No “but I haven’t even”s! Come along, boots on. Waterproof zipped. I’m showing you the island. You’ll never write anything if you don’t see the island.’

  We walked in the bright cold sun and she showed me the island. She showed me the green marble cliffs of Iona. We collected pieces of green marble from the white beaches. She showed me Columba’s Bay where Columba first landed, dragging his tiny vessel high on to the sand. She pointed west across the leaping sea to his home in Ireland. She told me how he’d been a high prince who fought a terrible war in Ulster, resulting in the deaths of many. He sought repentance for all the blood he’d spilt and that night heard a voice in a dream. He must fashion a coracle from wood and skins and row his way east across the sea till he could no longer see his Irish home. He must settle where he landed but never return. Only then could he be forgiven.

  Columba’s coracle, she said, was like a large upturned walnut and he pushed on his single oar, beating his way across the waves. He looked back but still saw Ireland bobbing in the distance. At long last he reached a low white island and landed there amongst the green marble just as dawn was rising. Leaving his craft on the green stone strand, he climbed to the topmost point of the island, the mount of Dun I. He stood in the first morning light amongst the swooping gulls. He looked back across the creeping churning seas, but no Ireland came to view.

  He was forgiven.

  I looked across the sea and marvelled at the distance.

  ‘How did he get all the way here from Ireland in a tiny boat with one oar?’

  ‘He didn’t give up,’ she replied with a flinty look.

  On the same day, she showed me the Hermit’s Cell – a circle of stones reputed to be the foundations of Columba’s own cell, open to the sky, the elements and the whirling stars where he went alone to pray, she said. Sometimes on our walk she would pray herself, but not all alone like Columba. We marched in the bright sun and the wind skimmed cold on our faces and she sang and prayed aloud to her Lord like a companion.

  ‘Oh thank you, thank you, dear Father, for all THIS. For the grey rocks, for the green green moss, for the whistling wind that sings, for the frosty white islands strung out like pearls along the horizon.’

  At one point she stopped and said ‘Right! We’ll have our sandwiches here’, and she produced two brown-paper bags, one for each of us. She sat on a rock and said grace then began to eat while I leapt up a strange-shaped black cliff face, strangely placed in the middle of the flat emerald moor. I clambered to the top of the black rock, catching my breath and exhiliarated. I stood up to get a view. Then a voice from below. A voice without mercy, like a maths mistress. Or more like my mother.

  ‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING UP THERE? Come down this instant! Do you have any idea what that cliff is?’

  ‘No,’ I replied from the top, feeling inexplicably guilty.

  ‘The druids sacrificed their victims from there. They cut their throats and threw them from the top. It’s full of bad spirits. Come down immediately, do you hear!’

  I came down immediately.

  That same night, I woke screaming from nightmares. I forced myself awake so they wouldn’t return.

  I told the sister next day.

  ‘Well I did tell you,’ she said.

  The sky began to golden on the distant line of horizon and she scrambled us to the top of Dun I to find the Well of Eternal Youth.

  We stood with views to all four compass points. Below us the Bay at the Back of the Ocean. Next stop America. The island of Staffa far out like a moored boat. Or a whale. Waiting for the tide to take it. We could see the white ribs and black mouth of Fingal’s Cave. The waves foaming in and out, boiling in c
ircles. She pointed to a perfectly formed hill, like a burial mound. The Hill of Angels she said. Where one night Columba was followed by a single curious monk – ‘Strictly against orders, naughty man!’ – to discover the saint on top of the hill, hands raised and dancing beneath the stars, surrounded by a ring of golden-winged angels. Also dancing. We laughed at the idea. The dancing saint and the dancing angels and the little monk, wide-eyed, watching beneath the moon. His life changed for ever.

  ‘Look at the sea,’ she shouted through the thundering wind.

  I pulled up my green waterproof, the zip against my teeth, and lifted my glasses spattered by rain.

  ‘What colour is it?’ she commanded.

  ‘What?’ I shouted back.

  ‘The sea! The sea!’

  I peered down at the shifting waves. I cleaned my glasses.

  ‘Grey,’ I replied.

  ‘Grey? Grey!?’ she shouted back. ‘Are you colour blind! Look look! The seas of Iona are not grey! They are a myriad of all God’s colours, blues and greens, jade, topaz and amethyst. Can’t you see them!’

  She sounded hurt. I squinted through the stinging rain and looked for God’s colours.

  ‘Deeper! Look deeper!’ she shouted through the thunder.

  To drink the water in the Well of Eternal Youth we had to bend deep to our knees, hang on to a rock and reach down with our free hands to break the still, black surface. We cupped the water in our curling hands. When it finally reached our lips, the taste was icy cold and sweet. There was salt in the wind and the wind sang round us.

  We returned from the island on the same day as the dawn was breaking. We had been there one week. I clambered out of the boat, lugging my cases after me. She was no longer in wellies but in smart leather shoes. Her grey habit was clean and pressed. She told me the convent founder chose habits of grey and not black so as not to frighten children.

  The Iona Sound was still as we rode home. We travelled by bus through the early light of Mull and said goodbye at Oban. The seagulls screeched about us. She said, ‘Oh be quiet, you silly things!’

  I wanted to hug her but I didn’t. We shook hands.

  She said, ‘Goodbye then and God bless you.’

  She took another bus to her convent in Aberdeen, I caught the train to Glasgow and on to London.

  I went to Iona hoping to come back with a play. I came back with a notebook full of sketches and bits of dialogue, an early birth scene, based on memories of my son Sam’s birth, and a God and Gabriel scene that has remained unchanged since the start.

  The journey of The Messiah has been a long one. A thirty-five-year journey. It has been filmed, recorded and staged in the UK, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. It has been revised, revived, rewritten and rewritten again. The latest version, the version in this book is the closest to the first version. The Iona version.

  I have been blessed with many companions and collaborators on this journey, all of whom I sincerely trust I properly acknowledge in this volume.

  Many companions and collaborators. But the first, without doubt and without parallel, my navigator, storyteller, protector from bad spirits, my flinty-eyed guide across the rocks, streams and strands of Iona where my play was imagined, conceived and born.

  My sister in green wellies from Aberdeen. Her words still ringing through the wind on the bouncing boat from Fionnphort.

  The

  veil

  is

  very

  thin

  on

  Iona.

  November 2018

  This new production of The Messiah was first performed at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 18 October 2018, and subsequently performed at the New Theatre, Cardiff, the Lyceum Theatre, Sheffield, the Cheltenham Everyman Theatre, Richmond Theatre, and The Other Palace, London. The cast was as follows:

  MAURICE ROSE

  Hugh Dennis

  RONALD BREAM

  John Marquez

  MRS LEONORA FFLYTE

  Lesley Garrett

  MRS LEONORA FFLYTE ALTERNATE

  Margaret Preece

  MALE ROLES UNDERSTUDY

  Adam Morris

  Director

  Patrick Barlow

  Associate Director

  Tom Latter

  Designer

  Francis O’Connor

  Lighting Designer

  Howard Hudson

  Sound Designer

  Bobby Aitken

  Choreographer

  Siân Williams

  The original version of The Messiah was performed at the Tricycle Theatre, London, in January 1983, with the following cast:

  Patrick Barlow

  Julian Hough

  Lee Trevorrow

  Director

  Jude Kelly

  Designer

  Tom Cairns

  Acknowledgements

  Although this version of The Messiah is not a National Theatre of Brent production, all previous UK versions of the play, since 1982, have been. They have all been blessed with invaluable collaborations from performers, directors and designers and I want to honour and thank them all in this edition. I pray I have missed out nobody. Besides the wonderful creatives and company of the current production, I want to thank all previous Messiah creatives: Julian Hough, Lee Trevorrow, Jude Kelly, Tom Cairns, Jim Broadbent, Michael Minas, Anastasia Broadbent, Robert Austin, John Ramm, Kate Flowers, Susan Flannery, Loveday Ingram, Peter Lindley, Anthony Van Laast and Martin Duncan.

  P.B.

  Dedicated to

  The Isle of Iona

  Where this began

  Characters

  The Messiah is written for two actors and an opera singer

  ACTOR ONE – MAURICE ROSE

  ACTOR TWO – RONALD BREAM

  SINGER – LEONORA ‘MRS F’ FFLYTE

  The text published here may differ slightly from the play as performed in the 2018 production.

  ACT ONE

  Stage – general

  A circular (revolving) stage. Three tall classical columns and broken shorter columns surround it. Behind the columns, midnight-blue drapes with gold stars. By the stage-right column an elegant and plush dining-room chair.

  Music: Handel – ‘Hallelujah’.

  Enter MAURICE ROSE and RONALD BREAM through the midnight-blue drapes. They stand imposingly centre-stage. The music plays. And plays. RONALD looks alarmed. MAURICE signals offstage to turn it off.

  Music cuts abruptly.

  MAURICE. Picture – if you will – in as it were the mind’s eye – the lone figure of a –

  RONALD (sotto). I haven’t got the chair.

  MAURICE. What?

  RONALD (sotto). I haven’t got the chair.

  MAURICE (sotto). Then get the chair, Ronald.

  RONALD turns towards MRS F’s chair.

  That’s Mrs F’s chair! Chair, Ronald!

  RONALD exits hurriedly. MAURICE looks awkwardly at the audience. A huge clattering offstage. RONALD returns, limping slightly. He carries a fold-up chair. Opens it, pinches his finger. Positions it. MAURICE continues.

  – in as it were the mind’s eye – the lone figure of a man. Entirely alone in the great vastness of the desert.

  RONALD stands on the chair.

  Lights change.

  Desert – night

  MAURICE. See! How he stands! His brilliant black eyes restlessly roving the face of the universe searching into the depths of the heavens for the sign that he is looking for.

  RONALD’s eyes restlessly rove.

  Upon his head he wears a crown, a moon upon its left side, a sun upon its right; about his shoulders a jewel-encrusted cloak; a silken robe of aquamarine girds his loins.

  RONALD mimes awkwardly.

  About his wrists, bracelets in the shape of sand-snakes; a mighty jewel hangs heavy upon his index finger.

  RONALD sticks out a middle finger.

  Index finger!

  RONALD sticks out index finger.

  He is an Wise Man from t
he Orient. He is a thousand years old.

  RONALD plays very old.

  He knows the secrets of the earth, he has heard the music of the spheres and has gazed upon the etheric web of his own astral body.

  RONALD awkwardly puts his hands over his crotch.

  He stands now, as he has stood night after night, eyes fixed upon the stars, entirely motionless.

  MAURICE stands motionless for twenty-five seconds.

  RONALD waits awkwardly. His legs start to tremble. He looks panicked.

  Suddenly – a light appears in the sky. A new light. A star – hitherto unseen through the history of stars. ‘It is the sign I been looking for,’ he mutters beneath his breath as he –

  RONALD (mutters). It is the sign I been looking for!

  MAURICE. – as he leaps upon his milk-white dromedary –

  RONALD leaps on to his imaginary dromedary.

  – and grasps the silken reins. The proud beast rises proudly up –

  RONALD and the dromedary rise up.

  – and bears him across the Syrian dunes towards the glinting golden minarets of his far distant palace.

  RONALD (à la Lawrence of Arabia). Hut-hut! Hut-hut! Hut-hut!

  RONALD gallops round the stage and exits. Immediately re-enters. He gallops to the chair and shoots offstage with it.

  Another clattering.

  Stage – general

  MAURICE. Thank you. But now some introductions –

  RONALD re-enters, limping.

  I am Maurice Bromsgrove Rose, the Founder and Artistic Director of the Maurice Rose Players and very much the maison d’être, if you will, of the company’s artistic policies.

  Hello.

  And this is my associate and – Full Acting Company Ronald Bream –

  Nods to RONALD.

  RONALD. Yes. Thank you. I am Ronald Ricardo Bream and I am more than pleased and dishonoured to be here to be tonight acting tonight here with the Maurice Rose Players.

  MAURICE (sotto). Hello.

  RONALD (to him). Hello.