The Passion Play of 1922: I. Preliminary Encouragements

Extract

Though many books and articles are written round every decennial performance of the Passion Play at Oberammergau, and the drama has so many points of deep interest that it requires altogether exceptional control in any writer who sees it not to record his impressions, I think that there is still something to be said. With the conviction that the play could not be performed in any other theatre or by any other actors, abides the assurance that its chief virtues, its atmosphere of uniqueness, can yet be shared by the majority necessarily unable to make the pilgrimage. If I can persuade the reader to this paradoxical conclusion, perhaps I shall have deserved my own good fortune. Let me, then, try to show him the simple means whereby he can make a spectator’s experience his own. It is doubtful if The Ring can be enjoyed adequately anywhere but at Munich or at Bayreuth. It is certain that, in England, Shakespeare is himself only at the Old Vic. Ibsen demands to be played in cycles. But the Passion Play, which could not be transplanted, can be experienced in the study by anyone who studies its traditions, its history, and (above all) its text, with the aid of the magnificent sets of photographs that are available. Of course, some supreme effects will be lost. The music, which has never been published, will be wanting. The peculiar virtue of an open-air theatre, to realise which the Greek model at Bradfield should be visited, remains to seek.