wfn.org | Lambeth breaks from business for 'Crowning Glory' performance

["Lambeth98" <storm@indigo.ie>]

ACNS LC102 · 7 August 1998

Lambeth breaks from business for 'Crowning Glory' performance

by Katie Sherrod and Nan Cobbey
Lambeth Conference Communications

The culmination of three weeks' singing, dancing and
costume-creation took centre-stage at the Lambeth conference
Thursday night (August 6), as the opening (and only) night's
performance of "Crowning Glory," a musical presented by members
of the Spouses' Programme.

It began with dancing in the aisles and hoots of delight as cast
members enticed the seated into a stream of song and movement
undulating through the aisles. It ended with popping flashbulbs,
standing ovations and shouts of "Bravo!" "Bravo!"

"Crowning Glory," created by Veronica Bennett, wife of Bishop
Colin Bennett of Coventry (England) and based on stories by Oscar
Wilde, was performed last night to a standing room crowd in the
largest hall on campus.

"This was wonderful, wonderful!" exclaimed a woman in the front
row applauding with hands above her head. Earlier she had wiped
away tears as the haunting story unfolded its themes of love,
hope and generosity of spirit.

Weeks of work

The100-member cast spent two-and-half-weeks rehearsing the
colourful production, which took Mrs. Bennett more than a year to
write and arrange. "It's taken over our lives," confided cast
member Daphne Gear, wife of the Bishop of Doncaster, who played
the character of a "Professor of Ettikett," before the lights went down.

As she spoke, the drumming started. Five Sudanese dancers-four
women in filmy skirts and a singing bishop carrying a carved
cane-took over the stage, rhythmically spinning, bouncing and
clapping to the beat of a drum. Their joyful noise, infectious in
its spontaneity, soon had the crowd smacking hands with those
to left and right, before and behind.

For the next hour and a half, the "spouses" and their several
accompanying professionals delighted with their elaborate
costumes and props created out of a multitude of materials.
Veronica Bennett's music and catchy lyrics had many in the
audience humming and even singing

along. When "the gossips" whispered themselves onto the stage,
singing about "sitting on a secret" about how the queen-less king
did, in fact, have a son, their loud "sshh-sshh-sshhussing" set
the audience giggling again.

"Put on your glad rags, put on your smiles, bow and genuflect,"
they all sang a moment later, before the action began and the
hall stilled.

Transforming love

"Crowning Glory" is the story of the transforming power of love.
In a make-believe kingdom, a dying king confesses he has a son,
who has been brought up by his serving-maid mother in a cottage
in a nearby forest.

The boy is taken to his Advisors, who begin instructions in
"proper" kingly behavior, which-according to them-mostly involves
ignoring servants, acting bored, being fixated on one's lineage,
taking extremely good care of the Advisors and leaving "your
people to fend for themselves." This segment featured the lone
male spouse in the cast, Phil Roskam, husband of Bishop Catherine
Roskam of New York (USA). The broadly-drawn Advisors drew lots of
laughs with their self-centered silliness as they presented the
dazzled boy with a golden robe, a jeweled scepter and a crown of
rubies.

Then followed the entrance of a very sleepy bishop in a very tall
mitre, ill-fitting cassock and mismatched socks, who soon began
snoring in a seat on the stage. As the coronation rehearsal
began, the advisors awakened the bishop, who then nearly missed
the steps off the stage as the procession began. But with a nose
in the air-to keep spectacles from falling off-the bishop
processed down the aisle to hearty applause from the laughing
bishops in the audience. One bit of buffoonery had the
self-important courtiers forgetting the king as they processed
from the coronation. In their elaborate pomp they forgot the
circumstance.

The reality of poverty

Then the play turned serious. The sensitive boy-king soon learned
all is not well in his kingdom. After seeing sad, angry beggar
women, the outcasts of the city, below his window, the boy goes
to his Advisors, who dismiss his concerns and go on with plans
for a grand coronation. But that night he dreams three dreams
which reveal the exploitation of his people for his enrichment.
That same night, his grieving mother leaves a coronet of flowers
she has woven on the steps of the palace.

The dreams haunt the boy, and in the end, he acts on them. He
leaves his robe, sceptre and crown among the sleeping beggars,
transforming their lives with hope. The morning of his
coronation, he dresses in his simple peasant robes and gives a
coronet of flowers to the bishop who will crown him.

But as the dignitaries see him approach in the procession their
cheers turn to jeers. Cries of "He's little better than a
beggar!" and "Imposter!" ring out as they push and jostle him.
But as the Young King enters the cathedral, silence falls. Then singing is
heard in the distance. It is the outcasts of the city, carrying
in candles, coming to the cathedral doors. There, the Young King
appears to them, wonderfully transformed, his peasant robes
turned golden by the sun, his coronet of flowers a crown as
bright as stars, his simple staff a sheaf of blooming lilies.
Rich and poor alike fall to their knees, struck down by beauty.

For further information, contact:

   Lambeth Conference Communications
   Canterbury Business School
   University of Kent at Canterbury
   Telephone: 01227 827348/9
   Fax: 01227 828085
   Mobile: 0374 800212

   http://www.lambethconference.org