REVIEW: Vision of Piers Plowman at The Lion Ballroom, Leominster

Friday, October 9

by Peter Williams

The Lion Ballroom really looked the part. The glittering chandeliers gleaming on the polished oak-board floor and on the crescent of hoop-backed, cushioned chairs set out to face the long side wall; a half-moon performing area backed with one of two large tapestries depicting medieval rural scenes; on the stage, at the far end, between and beside the classical pillars, against the backdrop of a matching tapestry, a discrete array of period musical instruments, tended by their two expert owners/players. And, in the Green Room, the dancers and the solo speaker making ready.

Only the audience was still to come. How many, wondered your scribe, would Leominster and its environs muster up for an hour and a half of 14th century allegorical poetry, written, in vernacular Middle English, by a man born, probably in Cleobury Mortimer, in about 1330, and excerpts now to be performed by its translator? Answer - a goodly throng, some 80 strong, and a just reward for the efforts of the promoters and the artists, whose skills and dedication were evident throughout the evening.

Passamezzo, Herefordshire’s own Early Dance Group, has been tripping the medieval and Renaissance light fantastic since 1980, and, accompanied by David Hatcher on a vielle and Alan Crumpler on a psaltery (both instruments made by Alan), with gracious, nimble, stately step they set the scene for the vigorous entry of Peter Sutton who, without ado, launched into his vivid version of scenes from William Langland’s A Vision of Piers Plowman. (Excuse the alliteration, but Langland himself writes in alliterative non-rhyming lines, and the style is evidently catching!) Peter Sutton is a truly Renaissance Man, when it comes to dealing with not just the Medieval period. Having studied languages at Cambridge, before going into adult education, he became a researcher in Unesco, an editor in Hamburg, a freelance translator and, training as a professional actor, turned to writing plays, and lecturing round the world on languages and education, and speaking at conferences and literary festivals. So a solo spot at the Lion was taken in confident stride: and the audience took him to their collective heart.

There was more dancing to usher in the second half of the programme; and the musicians, with their array of tantalisingly named instruments - Rebec, Dordrecht Pipe, Tambourin de Béarn, Psaltery and Symphony, to name but some - at times provided delicate background music to the words, a feature indicating long and careful preparation of the scripts.

As to the words and their delivery, this was virtuoso stuff on the part of the translator/actor. Your scribe, himself once much given to drumming up an audience for his readings of poetry, knows the difficulty of devising a full evening of items that will not just hold the attention of an audience, but move and entertain them. Poetry reading is not acting: by tradition, there is only the voice, and facial expression to work with. Mr Sutton had extra tools in his bag - space in which to move about and gesticulate, and the actor’s full range of character and colour in his voice, which he exploited with relish and to the full. His challenge was to engage his audience with a single extended work - a work probably new to many of them, and one that on the page has some shape, some beginnings and endings, but when only heard, and for the first time, did not easily fall into sections or establish a structure.

Mr Sutton, of course, knew all about the 50 different manuscripts; the basic texts that grew from 2,500 lines in 1370 to 7,500 lines by 1390. His selection, perhaps 500 lines long, was from the longer form, and he knew why he had chosen these particular lines. He knew that the poem’s form, broadly, is of a series of eight visions, seen in the dreams of the sleeping ploughman, and the visions are divided into some 20 ‘passuses’, or sections. He knew the very different characters described in each section. He also knew the structure of the verse - not rhyming couplets like Chaucer, but lines using strong alliteration. He also knew how free or accurate his own translation is; and what the original sounds like.

His audience, in spite of a very helpful introductory note in the programme leaflet, perhaps knew little of all this.

Mr. Sutton’s first entry was arresting, plunging us straight in at the deep end. But might he consider the possibility, after the dramatic start, of coming briefly out of character, to set the scene, indicate the poem’s structure, say something about his approach to its translation and, perhaps, deliver some of his first lines in their original format and pronunciation?

Otherwise one could not fault his performance. All of his many gestures had point: the hand-held script never obtruded or got in the way: the variety of tempi, the use of pauses and silences, the significant emphases and the rapid near-throwaways, all amounted to a masterclass in how to engage and hold an audience with material that so easily could daunt or become wearisome. After six hundred and fifty years on the page, the characters in these dreams came alive with contemporary relevance. They still people our daily life and, though this is a sort of cross between a medieval morality play and Pilgrim’s Progress, it proved to be not a tract or sermon but, in Mr Sutton’s hands, a refreshing and entertaining portrayal of human nature that evidently changes very little down the centuries.

He has ploughed a difficult furrow and brought forth a rich harvest!