Review: Written on the Heart at the RSC's Swan Theatre
Oh, the irony. The programme notes for David Edgar's fine new play are written by Giles Fraser, Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, who observes that "This first Bible to be printed in English threatened to put the clergy out of a job."
Swan Theatre
Stratford
Oh, the irony. The programme notes for David Edgar's fine new play are written by Giles Fraser, Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, who observes that "This first Bible to be printed in English threatened to put the clergy out of a job."
Between writing these words and the play opening, Fraser quit his post over the cathedral's attitude to the tent protesters. It is a timely reminder that, four centuries after this story is set, conscience still makes martyrs of clerics, although thankfully without anyone being burned at the stake.
Edgar has written this play to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. He examines the passion, conviction and politics that went into producing the best-known book in the world and the haggling that raged before phrases such as "the salt of the earth" and "apple of the eye" passed into our language.
It is a scholarly, beautifully written work with two stunning central performances by Stephen Boxer as the great translator William Tyndale and Oliver Ford Davies as Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of Ely, whose opinion counted for so much in reaching the final draft.
Running through this intelligent, demanding and perhaps over-long production, directed by Gregory Doran, is the theme of fallible men trying to produce an infallible book. In the process we see proof of the adage that there is only one power on earth that can make good men do bad things, and that is religion.
Written on the Heart runs until March 10.
Review by Peter Rhodes.
