BLAZING Grannies stage F Mary Callan’s new play Voices From The Wilderness at the Spurriergate Centre, Spurriergate, York, from tonight to Saturday.
Directed by Baron Productions’ Daniel Wilmot, this Bible show is “designed to plug the gap caused by the lack of York’s big Mystery Plays this year”.
“My script is a parade of Old Testament characters telling their ‘inside stories’, followed by a few New Testament characters, leading to Christ’s crucifixion and Resurrection,” says Mary, a poet, storyteller and trained catechist in the Middlesbrough diocese.
“I have performed many of them in my one-woman Bible shows at the Edinburgh Fringe, but they have been taken to a new level under Daniel’s lively direction. Our team of amateur actors, playing multiple roles, are incredible.”
Rooted in dramatic and tragic ancient human stories from the Bible and the Quran, Voices From The Wilderness invites this week’s audiences to “discover God’s kindness to Adam and Eve after their disobedience; wander across the wilderness with Moses; flee from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, so close to modern Gaza.
“Be baffled with Joseph, wondering how to handle a surprise pregnancy. Grieve with the bereaved parents in Bethlehem. Listen to the soldiers tormenting their surprise prisoner, Jesus from Nazareth: is he really the King of the Jews?”.”
Callan’s script, in keeping with the medieval Mystery Plays, seeks to “makes the Bible stories utterly relevant to our own era’s trauma and anxieties, leading us, finally, to hope the impossible”.
The cast comprises Phyllis Carson-Smith, Wilma Edwards, Adam Marsdin, Michael Maybridge, Julie Speedie and Pietro Spicer.
For tickets, go to: ticketsource.co.uk/blazing-grannies.