The Guardian from London, Greater London, England • 33

The Guardian Friday October 20 1995 8 1 Arts Gospel according to Dennis Michael Billington savours Bill Bryden's stirring, communal adaptation of Son Of Man by Dennis Potter at The Pit, and argues that God is very much alive in British theatre mBBbSKBBBBBBSi ritual. The actors assemble in working clothes having, literally, clocked in. Hymns are constantly sung-including Potter's own favourite "Will there be any stars in my crown" to John Tams's music. At one point, after Jesus has preached a sermon on love, the actors move among us shaking hands. It sounds embarrassingly corny: in practice, it is a simple demonstration of theatre's capacity to unify.

By such devices, Bryden turns a TV play into a theatrical event. He is also aided by a strong cast led by Joseph Fiennes as a wiry, angry, abrasive Christ who kicks the money changers out of the temple with positively Marxist fervour. And there is good work from John Standing as a Shavian Pontius Pilate who despairs of military blockheads and who is perplexed by the force of Christ's radical ideas and from Philip Locke as a Caiaphas who has the beard of a prophet and the low scruples of a politician. The event moves us because Bryden, helped by DENNIS POTTER'S Son Of Man has had a curious history. Its vision of an angry, mutinous Christ exploded on to our TV screens in 1969 leading to threatened prosecutions for blasphemy.

It then turned up as a rather tame stage play at the Roundhouse. Now it has been stirringly resurrected by Bill Bryden at The Pit as a communal theatrical event irresistibly reminiscent of his production of The Mysteries. Potter's view of Christ is undeniably fascinating. It is partly a reaction against pre-Raphaelite sentimentality and the kind of anaemic milksop presented by Hollywood in a dreadful sixties film, King Of Kings. But Potter, the most autobiographical of writers, also imbues Christ with something of his own searing pain and incandescent fury.

This is a Jesus who spews up by the roadside before a big event, who ridicules established institutions, who preaches the subversive doc-trine of "love your enemies" and who combines messianic fervour who cumumes messiami; lei vuui T-irr "111 with self-doubt. Gazing at the We increasingly lOOK crucifix, he says: "You should have Hayden Griffin's design of timbered platforms arranged in the shape of a crucifix, creates a sense of folk ritual. But something even more powerful is at work which is to do with theatre's capacity stayed a tree and I should have TJO meaire tO DrOVlQe substitute religion stayed a carpenter." Bryden's production, however, unwittingly exposes Potter's chief to tap into ancestral religious feelings. It was obviously there in The Mysteries. I noticed it too in Katie Mitchell's production of Strindberg's Easter, also in The Pit, with its message of redemption and mercy.

It is as if, at a time of waning faith in organised religion, we look to theatre to shore up and sustain our wilting belief. Potter's play set out to re-define our notion of Christ by portraying him as an angry militant who doubted his own divinity. But, far from being blasphemous, it survives precisely because it re-creates the Biblical story and plays on a certain generation's memories of church, chapel and Sunday School. All I'm saying is that something significant and scarcely noticed seems to be happening in our culture which is that, as a counter to the materialism of the age, we increasingly look to art, and specifically to theatre, to provide a susbstitute religion. God, we are told, is dead: I would argue He is currently very much alive in the British theatre.

In rep at The Pit. Box-office: 0171-628 3351 Joseph Fiennes in Dennis Potter's Son Of Man 'a wiry, angry, abrasive Christ PHOTOGRAPH: TRISTRAM KENTON limitation: one that afflicts most TV drama. Put simply, Potter lacked the gift of poetry. The paradox is that while his expository prose was full of Biblical rhythms, his language in this play has the calculated thinness of one of those modern paraphrases of the New Testament. I guess Potter's aim was to be as" direct and simple as possible.

But, although there are odd echoes of Auden must love one another or die that is a fact," says Potter's Jesus) for the most part the diction rarely matches the radical vision. This is the key difference between stage and TV drama. Theatrical poetry, Cocteau famously said, should be "thick like the rigging of a ship and visible at a difference." But on television, where the camera can do half the work, the language of understatement works best. Admittedly the point of view is wholly different but you only have to contrast the knotty poetry of Tony Harrison's The Mysteries with Potter's prosaic plainness. Harrison's Jesus tells God: "Thou bade that I should buxsome be For Adam's plight I must be Potter's hero baldly announces: "The son of man must be a man." If Potter's play still works on us emotionally, in spite of its verbal limitations, it is partly because of Bryden's ability to turn theatre into a communal THEATRE Hamlet DANCE Stabat MaterRambert legs and the scything lines of the arms, echo the grand sweep of Vivaldi's phrasing, but they are also contained within a taut design.

Cohan never revs the dance up to glossy theatrics nor allows it to overbalance the score. The singing line of the alto soloist runs clean and clear through the dancers' bodies. Rambert have judged this Cohan revival perfectly its success should lead to more. At the Liverpool Empire until tomorrow, and Plymouth Theatre Royal from November 2-4 (tour details: 0181-995 4246) Judith Mackrell no self-respecting choreographer would do a Graham contraction again. Now, distance reveals what a great work Stabat Mater is.

Set to Vivaldi's score it is frankly religious' with the sorrowing Mother (Sara Matthews) supported and echoed by a chorus of eight women. Graham's influence is everywhere, but the intimacy and lyricism of the piece are Cohan's own. Small details are limpid and harrowing the slow measures with which Matthews crumples into ashen despair, the tight gestures which beat out the chorus's grief. Much larger moves, like the great swinging curves of the Graham in its emotional richness and physical juice. Cohan himself was a prime examplar of that tradition both in his own choreography and the way he trained his company London Contemporary Dance Theatre.

But already the Graham heritage was being scorned as draggy and embarrassing by a new generation for whom abstraction and performance art were the hip currency. As Cohan's own work weakened under the pressures of running a company, it seemed that THE history of Mappa Mundi is a tale of the unexpected.They performed Titus kabuki-style, Taming of the Shrew in drag, Mid-summmer Night's Dream with fireworks, Henry VIII with most of the Shakespeare edited out. They are the post-modernist enfants terribles of Welsh drama, practitioners of designer theatre, instant culturists, irreverent classicists. They are a breath of fresh air and with 10 productions in a couple of years A SUCCESSFUL revival, can open up history, and to watch Rambert perform Robert Co-ban's 1975 Stabat Mater is to see 20 years of British dance flashing past its pieces settling into a new shape. Two.

decades ago modern dance was steeped in the style of Martha.