MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL Orange Tree, Richmond

THE TURBULENT PRIEST REMEMBERED Sharp of AD Tom Littler, during the renovation of his theatre opposite, to direct (with Francesca Ellis) this gloriously set, candle-rich production in the already spectacular Victorian-Gothic church of St John the Divine, just opposite the theatre itself. Quite brave, too, as well as darkly topical, to stage T.S.Eliot’s dense, intense and frankly overwritten verse-drama about the 1170 assassination in Canterbury Cathedral of Henry II’s “turbulent priest” Thomas a Becket. It is Grecian in style, a great chorus of Women of Canterbury throughout, drifting,moving together in pale shabby robes ,sometimes speaking in chorus, sometimes singing (Orlando Gough writes a new score). They express from the start the huge unease of the sacreligious murder to come, mourning the seven years of their beloved Bishop’s exile: “There is no safety in the cathedral. Some presage of an act which our eyes are compelled to witness, has forced our feet towards the cathedral. We…