The most celebrated medieval morality play hasn’t had a major production in the UK since the William Poel and Ben Greet productions at the turn of the 20th century. I should have liked to have seen the play the anonymous playwright wrote; but the Christians he wanted to address are now much diminished.
Everyman, written in the 15th century, is powerful Catholic propaganda about facing up to the Final Reckoning. The characters are allegorical and the drama takes it for granted that the audience believes in God and the reality of damnation and hell.
The Everyman staged at the Olivier Theatre is an adaptation by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy, who has turned the play into a modern parable for today’s secular audiences. The pilgrimage to redemption and heaven has been cut. There is no hell, only death. Instead Duffy lambasts a materialistic and consumerist society for trashing the planet.
Everyman (Chiwetel Ejifor), 40 years a sinner, is a hard-drinking, coke-snorting, selfish and filthy rich hedonist, who is greatly surprised that Death is knocking at his door so soon. Forsaken by all his friends and frightened, he ludicrously attempts to bribe God, who is played by Kate Duchene as a cleaning woman with mop and bucket. Death is played by Dermot Crowley as a witty Irishman.
Rufus Norris’s epic production, his first as artistic director of the National Theatre, is notable for its physicality and opens with Everyman falling from a great height. The staging includes an awesome parade of rubbish-bag giants and a tsunami which certainly puts the wind up the audience, even if it doesn’t have the impact of Slava’s Snowstorm.