15 October 2009

15 October 2009

Origins for all Why are we here, say the bells of Grasmere? And where are we bound, say the bells all around?

Mark Woods hears some answers

H

AVING spent most of the millennia since their composition as a fount of wise sermons and personal devotion, the first few chapters of Genesis have over the last hundred years or so become a source of often bitter theological strife. Denominations have been split, friendships broken and accusations of naive fundamentalism and grave heresy have been slung about with abandon. But can Genesis 1-11 also be fun? Yes, according to the Riding Lights Theatre Company. Its new production, Origins and Lemons, is a wryly comic take on the opening chapters of the Bible, with a serious point to it. And it really is fun. The four cast members manage to fill two hours with a virtuoso set of sketches and monologues which are thoughtprovoking without being preachy. The prevailing note is cheerfulness, and it's sustained throughout, even when serious issues are being addressed. The Riding Lights thesis is that there are appropriate ways of talking about different kinds of truth, and it's important not to get them mixed up. Dawkinsites do, in what they say about religion, and young-earth creationists do, in what they say about the Bible. One tries to use the language of science to talk about faith, and fails; the other tries to use the language of faith to talk about science, and fails too. The point's made both explicitly and implicitly. The players - Alan Christopher, Fred Denno, Jamie Higgins and Rachel Wilcock - take to the stage at intervals to address the audience directly. The question why and the question how, they say, require completely different answers. You can identify the chemical composition of a human being, and work out how much the ingredients are worth - about 87 pence. But 'that's not what you are, it's just what you're made of’. Understanding the right use of metaphor is vital: 'Once you start speaking of the really vital things, imagery is the only way.' It shouldn't be thought, though, that this is just an attack, however polite, on creationism. It does not

fall into the trap of implying that because the stories in Genesis are not true in a literal and scientific sense, they are not true in a deeper way, and it unpacks some of those meanings too. And just as clearly, Riding Lights has the sort of atheistic scientists so beloved of the media in its sights (how on earth these people manage to generate so much publicity is beyond understanding). 'If religion is useless and harmful, as Darwinians believe, why hasn't evolution got rid of it?' ask the players - a telling point, it seems to me. There's a scene set in a school which is a quick-fire disposal of some of the common objections to religion. And they take on the big questions of pain and suffering, and why the world is as it is. We create, and we're made in the image of God; why not assume that God enjoys creating too, and that he's bringing his world to an as yet unseen perfection? The staging is minimalist, appropriate for a production which is touring churches and can't rely on the usual stage machinery. The characters include Noah as a salty sea-dog, Adam and Eve - their nudity tastefully indicated by appropriately designed kitchen aprons - Cain, represented by a ventriloquist's doll and voicing a moving poem; and a peculiar giant, one of the Nephilim, who appears in order to be ordered off because the writers can't think of what to do with him. Indeed, the story of the sons of God taking wives from among the daughters of men is almost invariably airbrushed out of our preaching schedules... This is popular apologetics at its best; think C S Lewis on a skateboard. If you go and take a nonChristian friend with you, you won't be embarrassed by it and there'll be lots to talk about afterwards.