By Sophia Zikic
Staging a medieval morality play about death and atonement in 2022 is a bold choice.
For those who (cleverly) didn’t take theatre studies in high school, medieval morality plays were a didactic genre of theatre that was produced in the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe. The plays were created for the purpose of spreading Christian teachings, but obviously, as stage productions, had the primary purpose of entertaining the masses. One of the most famous medieval morality plays was The Somonyng of Everyman, or the ‘Summoning of Everyman’, which was adapted by Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy in 2015, some 500 years after its original publication. Seven years after Duffy’s publication, Ormond Drama staged the play at the University of Melbourne’s new Guild Theatre. The plot is as follows: Death (Barnaby Hanning) is sent by a God (Pheonix Surridge) to the Everyman (Alex Cain), as the Everyman has squandered his life with materialism and greed. Upon finding out that he will die, Everyman searches for someone to defend his character for when he finally faces judgement.
With this context in mind, it is clear that Ormond Drama’s The Everyman (co-directed by Nathalie Wilder and Jonny Stone) will inevitably be thematically and politically charged, but first, I have to acknowledge the technical aspects of the play. The production was filled with strong actors and comedians. I particularly enjoyed the performance of Cain as the titular Everyman, who walked the line between pantomime and naturalism with great skill. Hanning as Death was also a delight—I thought that the creative interpretation of Death as a highly professional (but coldly furious) hitman was fresh and engaging. Megan Hansen and Jasper McConathy as Mother and Father respectfully were powerful in their smaller roles. Jonny Stone (who, impressively, also co-directed) as the child Everyboy was hilarious, and very tongue-in-cheek as he rolled around on a razor scooter. My personal favourite performance was by Milo Cooper as Fellowship, who embodied his name with a great deal of charm and not a small amount of cheek.
The staging and directorial choices were generally very good, particularly during the scene in which Everyman is rejected by the Worldly Goods, as they cannot follow him to face God. Each of the Worldly Goods (Dominique Schoff, Edie Sarson, Isabelle Escott and Claire Steele) is decked out head to toe in a golden fever-dream imagining of haute couture, and each sells their role as that bitch with great enthusiasm. However, other scenes, such as the first party, were less convincing, though I appreciate the challenge of depicting an enormous party scene with a small cast. This scene was an exception, however, and the directing and staging were usually impactful.
Live music always elevates a performance, and the work of Casey White and Emma Murphy on the keyboard created a throbbing, synthesised soundtrack, bringing to mind sweaty nightclub bathrooms and bad trips, a perfect fit for Everyman’s nightmarish final night. I noticed a number of musical motifs, such as the notes accompanying the deadly sins, which gave an additional layer of meaning to the performance, which I find is a dimension of stage production often underutilised in student theatre.
The costumes of Everyman were creative—particularly the aforementioned Worldly Goods—and served to clearly convey character and meaning in the production. Everyman’s first appearance on stage in business casual supported Everyman’s arrogant character, and later, drove home the parallels between him and Fellowship. The lighting and stage design were also similarly supportive of theme and character—though they were by necessity minimalistic, which in turn enabled the space to simultaneously gesture towards the physical world the Everyman inhabits, and the internal word he transverses in his own spiritual journey.
There is also a complexity to The Everyman that is difficult to describe. For a play about death—about, specifically, grappling with the inevitability of one’s own death, and reflecting on what we can achieve in our brief lifetimes—I think The Everyman is an excellent example of a story that could only be a play. There is something uniquely challenging about actors looking out at the audience and telling you that they are going to die, and even acting out their own deaths. Seeing their bodies in reality and knowing that they will indeed die is confronting, since in film or television actors are preserved forever in time. I thought it was powerful, and this feeling was only intensified when Death appeared on stage at the end of the show, always with the final word.
Then, there begs another question—why did Carol Ann Duffy and Ormond Drama choose to adapt and stage a morality play? The Everyman reads as simultaneously secular and non-secular in its values. The “sins” of the Everyman himself were ambiguous. The audience sees him do a lot of cocaine, drink to excess and refer to his numerous sexual relations with his friends both male and female. However, to me at least, these things don’t make someone a bad person. These “sins” are presented as being on par with other traits the narrative deems reprehensible, such as his materialism, and his ignorance of its cost to the planet or to exploited workers. Of course, Everyman represents every man—all of humanity. His sins are therefore magnified by billions and his personal responsibility is abstracted, but we only see one man’s story.
That being said, I still appreciate the structure and overall messaging of the production. I think that, broadly speaking, though there is a Christian slant to the text that is rooted in origins of the genre, the messaging—particularly the messaging surrounding climate change and Capitalism—remains pertinent to a modern audience. The Everyman proves that the morality play is still a genre with modern applicability. The entire production was performed in verse, with modern rhymes and slang, which felt fast and engaging. The allegorical structure was a great avenue for the particular story told. As I have already said, the production of a medieval morality play in 2022 is a bold choice, but one I believe that it is a choice that has paid off.
Ormond Drama’s production Everyman ran August 11th to 13th to three of four sold-out performances at the new Guild Theatre.
Sophia Zikic (they/she) is a student, writer and theatre enthusiast living in Naarm/Melbourne. As well as in The Dialog, their work can be found in Lot’s Wife and Farrago.
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