Weird and vengeful

Southwark Playhouse has moved. Its new home is a warren of arcades carved out of the massive viaduct that carries commuter trains into London Bridge station. Its latest show is a ‘promenade performance’ about Peter Abelard, the thinker and cleric, and Eloise, the thinker and sex bomb. ‘Promenade’ means the audience don’t just sit there being entertained, they have to work. We gathered in a damp dark hall at the start of the show while the cast of black-robed monks milled about muttering ominously. We were split into small groups and herded into a vestry where we each received a hooded cloak and a belt of cord. Togged up, we filed into a gloomy pit where a pool of water shimmered in the half-light. Audience and players were now identically dressed. Creepy. Patrolling monks adjusted our gowns. An abbot mounted the rostrum and began hectoring us about sin and damnation. ‘Paucorum improbitas est multorum calamitas,’ he thundered. He made us repeat it three times. Loose translation: ‘A naughty minority can create nuisance levels out of all proportion to their numbers.’ Too true. Then, a weird ceremony of sado-Christening. A monk stripped to his undies and was thrust deep into the water by the abbot, who glared at us with the malevolent leer of a traffic warden. The queue shuffled forwards and a second monk was peeled and rinsed.

As the line advanced I began fiddling with my robes, worried that I too was about to be slam-dunked for Jesus. But the third monk was accused of some unforgiveable crime and instead of being blessed he was drowned. Thank God for that. We shuffled out past his white body slumped in the holy water. Thus the play developed as a set of tableaux performed in gruesome locations. Through veils of cobwebs we watched Eloise breathlessly seduce Abelard.