Our two Bible readings this evening are themselves quite dramatic, but I shall not refer to them because I am thinking of the 30th Anniversary of The Hampstead Players this evening. Several years ago now, one of our Bishops, well known and still very active indeed, said to a theatre director in his theatre, “You could probably help me – I could do with a bit of drama in some of my clergy.”
Whether there has been and is drama in the clergy is not for me to say, but we here at Hampstead Parish Church can be grateful that the Hampstead Players was founded by one of our clergy of the time, indeed by the then Vicar Graham Dowell, and that over the years many of our clergy, beginning with Graham himself, up to and including our present Vicar, have performed roles in many of the productions. That is a salutary reminder of the fact that as we know, in our civilisation, spawned as it was by the Greeks, drama was at one time closely allied to worship: For this we have the evidence of the drama in Ancient Greece which was like, if it was not indeed, a religious performance.
Even today, our Service of Eucharist is, in reality, a dramatic event, preaching and living through the drama of Jesus Christ, his life, death and resurrection, and any such service which forgets, or loses sight of the drama that is being acted out there is usually, in my experience at least, a somewhat dull service. The fact that it is a drama in which each of us has a part adds to its poignancy: for each of us together the drama reaches its high point as we come to the altar remembering a living drama of 2000 years ago and are then sent out with God’s blessing to tell others of the drama.
I may be biased, because I have had the good fortune to perform in a number of the productions over the years, but I believe that the founding of the Hampstead Players (or however they were known in their early days) was a prophetic act by Graham Dowell – not surprising perhaps, because Graham was nothing in his ministry if not a prophet. A prophet, yes, but I question how clearly he could foresee the impact of the Hampstead Players – or the Drama Group, however you like to call them – on the fellowship of this church; he cannot surely have foreseen that one who was admittedly an amateur actor with little experience of the stage would, following his experience of the same here subsequently walk, if I may put it that way, walk into a part at the National Theatre; nor could he have foreseen that personal tragedy would lead to a very remarkable production of Julius Caesar last year nor that the Players would, also remarkably, expand to giving productions in France, nor, I suggest did he foresee, though he may have hoped, that the quality of performance would have become as high as it has over the years and culminated in performances only this last week as good as many in the West End.
It was only on Thursday that I was asked if I would speak to you this evening. I was tempted to say No’ because I usually take more time to ponder, pray and prepare but having said yes, then I was tempted to take the easy way out and merely relive the past by giving to you Becket’s last sermon as written by T.S. Eliot in Murder in the Cathedral but I resisted the temptation – such as it was! – partly because of the need to relearn it which I would not be able to do in the time and partly because of course there are many of the plays from which stimulating passages could be quoted – from, say, the Crucible, or Hamlet, or the Dreams of Anne Frank or the Winslow Boy to name but a few.
No, we will not quote from past performances because while we will surely want to give thanks for what has been done and enjoyed over the past 30 years and for all those who have contributed in one way or another we are to look forward to the next 10, 20 or 30 years. It always was, and I hope still is, fundamental to the drama Group or Hampstead Players that it is primarily a Church group of people. We have been, and are, delighted to welcome men and women not of this church into the group and we are grateful indeed for the contribution of one kind and another which they have brought and how they have helped to improve the quality of the productions, but I for my part hope that the basic Christian ethos of the Company will be kept, because if so I believe that the future of the group will remain sound, secure and can grow.
I suggest that last week’s brilliant production of A Tale of Two Cities does more than hint at what our attitude should be. A Tale of Two Cities is not an expressly religious book nor as finely adapted an expressly religious play, but in my judgement, leaving aside our enjoyment and appreciation of it, it points to two things. Firstly that however great sinners we may be, whatever wastrels we may consider ourselves to be in the quiet of our hearts as Sydney Carton felt himself to be, however unloved and unloving we like Carton may sometimes be or consider ourselves to be, we may at some point be touched by love, as he was which changed and changes everything. Externally his love was for Lucie Manette and this love exposed the fineness of his true nature. We look to be touched by Christ and thus, like Carton, to find all things new. With that love we may find ourselves, as he found, to be more heroic – spiritually at the very least – than others who seem so much more worthy than us – outwardly successful, highly thought of, and so on, Pharisees we might say – so that at last our downgrading of ourselves and, perhaps, despair, may vanish away as we find ourselves giving ourselves wholly to – and indeed dying for – another to the benefit of many others besides and maybe a moment will come for us when, unheard, we say to ourselves as did Carton, “It is a far far better thing that I do than I have ever done.” And the second thing to keep in mind is as declared by the Narrator as the last words of the evening, “I am the Resurrection and the life saith the Lord; he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; whoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.” If the Group will keep those words at the heart of their being, both individually and collectively, they will, I believe, find themselves working even more productively and we shall have many more successful performances ahead.
There subject to one final thing, I end, because – whether with the right priorities or not is not for me to say, I know that many are keen to extend this evensong as quickly as possible to a party below! But first one final thing – the fact that the Bishop mentioned at the beginning of this address wanted more drama in some of his clergy does not mean that he does not want more drama in some of his lay people. … hint? … hint? … Amen.