mvrder most fovl (Morality Play - Barry Unsworth)

Member Name: pje

Product:	Morality Play - Barry Unsworth
Date:	19/12/01 (454 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Atmospheric mystery, full of danger, short.

Disadvantages: Too short?

It's eight days before Christmas and a young man is on the run after being caught in flagrante delicto with a married woman - which is rather frowned upon when you are taking holy orders! His name is Nicholas Barber, and he is our narrator in this 14th century murder mystery that was short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1995.

While fleeing through the woods he meets a troupe of travelling players (performers of plays) one of whose number has just died of natural causes. Their patron is away, fighting in France, and they are en route to Durham to perform for his lady's cousin. Nicholas asks if he can tag along with them (there is safety in numbers after all) and since they need another performer to take over the roles of their dead friend, the priest becomes an actor...

There is a vivid mediaeval atmosphere to this novel. The pages aren't actually covered in dung, but I could smell it, and the chill from the snow made me shiver. Danger pervades the pages, along with earthy humour:

"Between here and Durham we shall have little more than acorn meal to swallow, with our own snot for a sauce," Nicholas is warned.

Their trek through countryside where the Black plague is still a threat, eventually brings them to a town where they can have their companion buried and raise a few shillings by putting on a play from their repertoire.
The Play of Adam, the Play of Noah, the Rage of Herod, Christ's Nativity...or something new perhaps? A twelve-year-old boy called Thomas Wells has been strangled near the town, and a young woman, who was seen near the scene of the crime, is to be hanged. The leader of the players sees this as an opportunity to swell their dwindling coffers:

"It has been in my mind for years now that we can make plays from stories that happen in our lives. I believe this is the way that plays will be made in the times to come."

And so "The Play of Thomas Wells" is conceived - but how will the townsfolk re
act to seeing strangers re-enact this recent tragedy? And as the players gather details of the murder, discrepancies arise, and different scenarios present themselves while they rehearse, and then it transpires that some other children have gone missing recently...

Of course it's one thing to use a play to tell a tale from bygone days, but what if some of the characters are very much alive and in the audience? Is the play the thing wherein they'll catch the conscience of the murderer?


Morality Play is dramatic, compelling and thought provoking - who did first portray real-life people in a play, and what would the reaction have been? It has been compared favourably to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, and if you enjoyed Perfume by Patrick Süskind or the Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters, or just fancy a good mediaeval murder mystery, you'll love this. A film of Morality Play (called "The Reckoning") will be released next year.

The one criticism I would have is that there probably should have been more. The characters in the troupe might have been explored in greater depth, and in the end, the fate of some of them is left hanging in the background, inexplicably forgotten. But then again, endings can be difficult for a writer - sometimes it's hard to know just when to s


Paperback: £5.99 ISBN: 0140175741 pp 188
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