Durham Mysteries 2010
Durham Mysteries 2010
Posted: 02 Jun 2010
In and around Durham City
It’s always gratifying to be in at the start of something new that you feel sure is going to become a huge success.
Imagine seeing Oasis in a pub before they hit the big-time or Victoria Wood at a workingmen’s club or Kenneth Branagh first treading the boards and tipping them for stardom: that’s a bit what it was like seeing the Durham Mysteries.
Not that this project thought small – it featured a total cast of hundreds and took in the city’s Gala Theatre and cathedral as venues as well as an outdoor stage on the Sands.
In ten separate productions, the project encompassed Old and New Testament tales from the fall of Lucifer to Christ’s crucifixion.
Using schoolchildren, students, professional and amateur actors and musicians, the cycle featured hip-hop, rap, break-dancing, animation and more – with a distinctly North East flavour.
I particularly liked Heaven’s Got Talent (which pitched a supremely confident, easy-on-the-eye Lucifer against an apparently less stellar but more vocally gifted representative of mankind in a take-off of the TV show), the Fall of Creation at the cathedral and a buxom, capricious and distinctly Geordie female God in Noah and the Fludd.
It’s all set to happen again in five years’ time – but why wait until then? I say repeat the cycle in August (when it’ll be warmer on the Sands) and do this every year.
Judging by the audience reaction, it will be well received and feels particularly appropriate in this magnificent cathedral city.
Has a new tradition just been born? I think so.
Anne Graham
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