Passion Play

by Peter Nichols

Passion Play had 4 performances over 20 years ago (between the 16th of July 2003 and the 19th of July 2003) at The Riverhouse Barn

Peter Nicols\' clever, ingenious play is a dissection of adultery. The title contains a deliberate pun for this is a play about sexual love and suffering and the fragile line which divides them. Bodies may be beautiful but it is in the head where pain and passion live and here love can quickly turn to hate.

James and Eleanor are a couple married for 25 years with grown up children and a life of cosy routine. He restores religious paintings in his garden studio while she sings in a classical choir. This interest in art and music and the passion they express act as a further backdrop to the themes of the play.

Their peace is shattered by the predatory seductress, Kate, whose middle-aged lover has recently died. Now she fastens on to James as the ideal replacement.

This familiar format is sharpened by bringing on to the stage the alter-egos of the two main characters and, by showing the domestic consequences of blithe adultery - the midnight rows, the visits to the shrink, the mental crack-up and the difficulty of parting when passion is dead.

The play is full of wonderful comic observations and the clever use of having two actors play one character means we get to hear both the superficial conversation and what they are really thinking and feeling.

As the audience listens to the glorious, passionate music of Mozart\'s Requiem and Bach\'s St Matthew Passion, they are presented with a modern dilemma - the fidelity proposed by the moralists which can lead to imprisoning tedium and dullness versus the infidelity of the liberalists, which can produce mental torment and suffering.

The play captures the exhilaration and embitterment of physical passion and is also about deceit, loyalty, anguish and emotional pain.