The Gospel of Matthew (tour – Norwich)
There is nothing reverential about George Dillon’s staging of the New Testament narrative, but it shows an immense respect for the story it tells. The effect is a bit like hearing Verdi’s Requiem for the first time, especially the “Dies irae” – you don’t need either faith or scepticism to be overwhelmed by its intensity.
The background uses projections. Some of these are textual, both in Hebrew and in English. Others range from the abstract to the archival, so that we watch the progress to the Holocaust as well as the destruction of the Twin Towers. An x-ray of an unblemished hand hovers behind the story of the Crucifixion.
Some of this grated slightly for me. I can see why Dillon evades the words “synagogue”, “Sadducee”, “Pharisee”. I’m not so sure that “church” and “bishop” – which replace them – really make the argument more relevant. This 2,000-year old story is presented in such a way that it feeds our imagination (and peoples the stage) in its own right. It doesn’t really need any specific historical decoration.