Morality Play - Barry Unsworth

It’s not often I’m impatient to get back to a book. This was A Good’un.
 
Unsworth’s tender hand depicts the travails of travelling players in medieval England and the loose, strange solidarity that drives them onward. Your very likeable narrator is a by no means unethical, yet scurrilous young priest. On joining the company, he changes the group dynamic, though not its soul.
 
The troupe’s guiding star is an integrity tempered by the needs of day-to-day survival. This produces such a creative tension in their acting as to conjure up (figuratively speaking) a spirit of intelligence that enlivens and spins the tale forward. Their spontaneity surprises even them.
 
The story gets truly interesting when, for reasons of necessity, the actors take a step over a line drawn by church and custom and perform a secular play about real, local events in which they themselves have become involved.
 
It made me think of the shift in painting in the same era away from religious themes towards humanist and realistic subjects. At the time, such decisions were not made for ideological motives. The artists suddenly had middle-class patrons who wanted something different. All the same, the choices both produced and portrayed a profound cultural change.

In “Morality Play”, the performances themselves turn into the real action of the tale, and the entwining of art with individual lives becomes political, provocative, subversive and real.
 
Unsworth is very skilled at visual narrative. There’s one trick I really liked that he uses on more than one occasion. By the subtle device of describing a gesture, especially during a performance, a particular meaning is conveyed to all those concerned and watching: fellow players, theatre audience and reader. And with a few deft touches, you also get a feel for period and place.
 
That’s the more academic lowdown. More to the point, the story is gently gripping, nicely paced and amusing. Perhaps my favourite book this year.