Mirror Magazine

Mirror Magazine

Peace and brotherhood,drama and song
By Vidushi Seneviratne
King Henry appoints Beckett as the Archbishop of Canterbury. With time, he began to feel that Beckett was giving precedence to the church, and tension built up rapidly, based on this state-church conflict.

“Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” are some of the King’s words, where he voices his dissatisfaction about the situation. This is the basic crux of the plot of an adaptation of T.S Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral, set to be staged by the English Academy Drama Group on July 30 and 31, at the Lionel Wendt.

With the tension leading to the exile of Beckett, the story reaches its climax when Henry’s knights take matters into their own hands, accusing him of various wrongdoings and eventually murdering the Archbishop, ironically at the alter of the Canterbury Cathedral. “The play ends with the knights justifying their killing. They claim that Beckett opened the doors of the Cathedral for them to enter, and so, was inviting martyrdom and provoking them. They also claim that since they were giving more prominence to the church, the assassination was justified,” says Father Claver Perera, of the National Seminary, speaking on behalf of the cast.

With the cast of the production consisting of eighteen theology student brothers and one ordained priest playing the part of Beckett, many of them have been involved with previous dramas produced by Haig Karunaratne, who incidentally is the director and producer for this year’s production as well. Adding variety to the cast, the cast member playing King Henry is incidentally from Pakistan.

“Drama has taken me across many cultures and eras, cutting across time and place,” says brother Robert D’Lima, who has been at the seminary for the last four or five years, and feels that this experience has widened his horizons.

A diverse production, Dona Nobis Pacem (Give Us Peace), will be the choral part of the concert, with the English Academy Choir in Choral Harmonies, directed by Father Claver Perera. The Choral group consists of about twenty members, between the age range of twenty one years to about twenty eight.

Some of the songs that are set to be performed are Va Pensiero, based on the psalm “By the rivers of Babylon,” Las Mananitas, which is a popular Mexican song sung on Saint’s Day, La Montanara, the Mountain girl, which is the queen of the Trentino mountain songs and Juanita, with its haunting melody and intricate harmonisation.

The Academy Day celebration, which is an annual event, will be held on a grander scale this year, due to it being the golden jubilee concert.

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