God Save Us! - London’s Latest Medieval Comedy
The upstairs theatre of the Lion and Unicorn pub, near Camden, is not where you expect to find one of the funniest and smartest nights of theatre in London. But for one week, God Save Us! turned that little room into a medieval English town, and it never stopped being hilarious.
The play is set in the Middle Ages, when the Catholic Church was effectively the law. The Bible existed only in Latin, the priests were the only people who could read it, and at Mass the congregation got little more than a brief gloss on the stories. Most of the service passed over their heads. In one small town, a curious young woman who has had the privilege of an education refuses to accept this. She is the town's resident protester, and she can rally everyone behind her causes. This time, she wants the Bible translated and the church services held in English, so that people can understand what they are praying - and her plan is to block all town exits by filling the streets with farm animals.
The head priest has no intention of agreeing. To keep her busy, he asks her to put on a morality play instead. She writes it, directs it and stars in it with her best friend, in scenes that are consistently very funny. The scheme backfires, because a second, far more careless priest keeps retelling Bible stories without noticing he is breaking the rules. The nativity story slips out, and the play-within-the-play changes with it. They decide to stage a nativity of sorts.
A second educated woman soon arrives from Yorkshire. She is a divorcee who has inherited land in the town and came only for some paperwork, and she is quickly roped into the production. As the company discovers the story of the three kings and the miracle of the birth, she explains what it means. God chose to be born poor, to show he was a god for the poor and the rich alike, loving everyone equally, in a faith that had nothing to do with worldly wealth. The priests, however, are not keen on this message getting around.
Underneath the comedy runs a sharp point about knowledge and power. The play shows how a church that controlled information saw educated people as a danger, and yet those same people were the ones who pushed to spread that information to everyone. The ending is happy and funny. The priests agree to translate the services so that everyone can follow, while still keeping some of the Latin.
The message is a serious one, but you never stop laughing. With only five actors, the production makes a full town feel alive, and the cast are warm, present and wonderfully connected to the audience in such an intimate room. The company was composed by Julie Joubert, Charlie James-Howard, Xavier Atkins, George MacGowan and Lily Blunsom, directed by Esalan Gates. In roughly 70 minutes with no interval, they tell a complete, well-structured story and hold the audience’s attention the whole way through.
The only sad part is the gap between the quality on stage and the resources behind it. These are great actors working without much budget or financing, and a production this good deserves a longer run, a bigger profile, and real support from the wider theatre and arts community. That it has already closed after a single week feels like a missed opportunity.
The company is constantly putting on new productions, and I highly recommend attending their next one for your next night out in the city. The actors are incredibly talented and deserve far more attention. Tickets for shows like these are never money wasted, and this one was worth every penny.
Edited by Aminata Ndiaye, Theater Editor
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