by Katie Sherrod and Nan Cobbey
Lambeth Conference Communications

The culmination of three weeks' singing, dancing and costume-creation took centre-stage at the Lambeth conference Thursday night (August 6), as the opening (and only) night's performance of "Crowning Glory," a musical presented by members of the Spouses' Programme.

It began with dancing in the aisles and hoots of delight as cast members enticed the seated into a stream of song and movement undulating through the aisles. It ended with popping flashbulbs, standing ovations and shouts of "Bravo!" "Bravo!" 

"Crowning Glory," created by Veronica Bennett, wife of Bishop Colin Bennett of Coventry (England) and based on stories by Oscar Wilde, was performed last night to a standing room crowd in the largest hall on campus.

"This was wonderful, wonderful!" exclaimed a woman in the front row applauding with hands above her head. Earlier she had wiped away tears as the haunting story unfolded its themes of love, hope and generosity of spirit. 

Weeks of work

The100-member cast spent two-and-half-weeks rehearsing the colourful production, which took Mrs. Bennett more than a year to write and arrange. "It's taken over our lives," confided cast member Daphne Gear, wife of the Bishop of Doncaster, who played the character of a "Professor of Ettikett," before the lights went down. 

As she spoke, the drumming started. Five Sudanese dancers-four women in filmy skirts and a singing bishop carrying a carved cane-took over the stage, rhythmically spinning, bouncing and clapping to the beat of a drum. Their joyful noise, infectious in its spontaneity, soon had the crowd smacking hands with those to left and right, before and behind.

For the next hour and a half, the "spouses" and their several accompanying professionals delighted with their elaborate costumes and props created out of a multitude of materials. Veronica Bennett's music and catchy lyrics had many in the audience humming and even singing along. When "the gossips" whispered themselves onto the stage, singing about "sitting on a secret" about how the queen-less king did, in fact, have a son, their loud "sshh-sshh-sshhussing" set the audience giggling again.

"Put on your glad rags, put on your smiles, bow and genuflect," they all sang a moment later, before the action began and the hall stilled.

Transforming love

"Crowning Glory" is the story of the transforming power of love. In a make-believe kingdom, a dying king confesses he has a son, who has been brought up by his serving-maid mother in a cottage in a nearby forest.

The boy is taken to his Advisors, who begin instructions in "proper" kingly behavior, which-according to them-mostly involves ignoring servants, acting bored, being fixated on one's lineage, taking extremely good care of the Advisors and leaving "your people to fend for themselves." This segment featured the lone male spouse in the cast, Phil Roskam, husband of Bishop Catherine Roskam of New York (USA). The broadly-drawn Advisors drew lots of laughs with their self-centered silliness as they presented the dazzled boy with a golden robe, a jeweled scepter and a crown of rubies.

Then followed the entrance of a very sleepy bishop in a very tall mitre, ill-fitting cassock and mismatched socks, who soon began snoring in a seat on the stage. As the coronation rehearsal began, the advisors awakened the bishop, who then nearly missed the steps off the stage as the procession began. But with a nose in the air-to keep spectacles from falling off-the bishop processed down the aisle to hearty applause from the laughing bishops in the audience. One bit of buffoonery had the self-important courtiers forgetting the king as they processed from the coronation. In their elaborate pomp they forgot the circumstance.

The reality of poverty

Then the play turned serious. The sensitive boy-king soon learned all is not well in his kingdom. After seeing sad, angry beggar women, the outcasts of the city, below his window, the boy goes to his Advisors, who dismiss his concerns and go on with plans for a grand coronation. But that night he dreams three dreams which reveal the exploitation of his people for his enrichment. That same night, his grieving mother leaves a coronet of flowers she has woven on the steps of the palace. 

The dreams haunt the boy, and in the end, he acts on them. He leaves his robe, sceptre and crown among the sleeping beggars, transforming their lives with hope. The morning of his coronation, he dresses in his simple peasant robes and gives a coronet of flowers to the bishop who will crown him.

But as the dignitaries see him approach in the procession their cheers turn to jeers. Cries of "He's little better than a beggar!" and "Imposter!" ring out as they push and jostle him. But as the Young King enters the cathedral, silence falls. Then singing is heard in the distance. It is the outcasts of the city, carrying in candles, coming to the cathedral doors. There, the Young King appears to them, wonderfully transformed, his peasant robes turned golden by the sun, his coronet of flowers a crown as bright as stars, his simple staff a sheaf of blooming lilies. Rich and poor alike fall to their knees, struck down by beauty.