THE MYSTERY CYCLE: CREATION
God’s a hell of a storyteller, but he’s not much of a writer. Somehow those who took down his words managed to turn fantastic stories about wonderful characters into rigorous Sunday-school reading exercises. Court Theatre is trying to change that by resurrecting the medieval mystery plays that mined the Bible stories for both their moral and entertainment value, blazing through the Old and New Testaments in long dramatic performances that used contemporary references to deliver the Lord’s messages in a way members of all social classes could understand.
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Given that tickets for Court Theatre’s marathon performances of The Mystery Cycle: Creation and The Mystery Cycle: The Passion are 40 to 50 bucks on nights when they play together (they usually rotate in repertory), we may assume that this form of God’s wisdom is now available only to those willing to pay through the nose for it. Perhaps Adam and Eve paid more for the fruits of knowledge, but they didn’t have to sit through a messy three-hour performance that uses expensive gizmos instead of intelligence to get its points across. While Nicholas Rudall’s production of Bernard Sahlins’s adaptation may be faithful to the spirit of the original mystery plays, it is frequently shallow and trivializes the lives of characters who have inspired great works of literature throughout the ages.
What emerges is sanitized and jokey, more superficial than fluff like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and Two by Two. It has the sense of cloyingly feel-good children’s theater and very little drama or mystery.
