Andrew Haydon
posted 13 December 2006

On Religion is a 'theatre essay' - writer and director Mick Gordon’s term for his series of devised pieces and plays, which take a single - usually vast - topic (previous ‘On’s have included Love, Death and Ego) and explore it within a theatrical context. The term runs the risk of becoming a bit of a catch-all excuse: parts of a play deemed insufficiently dramatic can be chalked up to the essay side, while any dips in the rigour of investigation can be ascribed to the need for dramatic action. In the case of On Religion, no such excuse-making is necessary. 

Although it doesn’t feel quite like a fully-finished play - nor an exhaustive disquisition on its subject - it does present both a startling array of brilliantly argued positions alongside some of the most genuinely moving scenes this reviewer has seen in a theatre for quite some time. There is a certain joy about its roughness, its not-quite-polished-ness, which allows the two strands of moving family drama and rigorous intellectual debate to co-exist happily while making it easier for the audience to get the most out of both.

At the centre of On Religion is an aggressively atheist or ‘naturalist’ professor of natural sciences arguing with her Jew-ish (as Jonathan Miller put it) lawyer son about his decision to re-train as an Anglican priest. In this it is most reminiscent of plays by Tom Stoppard, the main difference being that rather than seek to prove a thesis, On Religion simply offers a range of valid positions and credits the audience with the intelligence not to need leading by the nose.

The fluid staging works well, although, having subsequently read the script - a natural reaction to being bombarded with such intellectually demanding material - it does not quite make everything that is apparently happening fully clear; an early scene which turns out to have been an hallucination could have been more readily signposted. The play boasts a fine clutch of performances: Elliot Levey as the son, Tom, turns in a characteristically charismatic performance - presenting the young would-be priest as mixture of near-messianic conviction and fierce intelligence, he often comes across as an (unintentional) parody of a young Tony Blair (as played by a young Michael Sheen); indeed, a sermon which he delivers late in the play contains so many 'y’know’s' that in a different context one would be searching for the intended political subtext. Gemma Jones as his mother Grace also turns in a fine, emotionally exhausting performance - whether it completely captures her character’s cool intellect is questionable, but it certainly delivers a hell of a visceral punch: it is a very good performance, but not necessarily of the character as originally written. Priyanga Burford as Tom’s girlfriend Ruth also achieves some show stopping emotional moments.

It is the very quality of the intellectual debate that is the real star of the piece, however. The mass of extensive research untaken by Gordon and his creative team, which includes the celebrity philosopher AC Grayling, has really paid off. The list of those thanked in the programme reads like a who’s who of contemporary thinking on matters of faith, from both sides of the belief divide, ranging from Archbishop Rowan Williams and Tariq Ramadan through to Professor Richard Dawkins.

Till 6 January 2007.