Behind a winter door: it's serious business when the mummers come a-knocking

Performing Arts & Entertainment in Canada, Autumn, 2002 by Gordon Jones

Preparing for last year's mummering in the shadow of September 11 provoked debate within the group. With President George W. Bush leading a crusade against Islamic Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda, could they retain the Turkish Knight as King George's antagonist? Should they perhaps replace him with a traditional figure from a variant text of the play, like St. Patrick? Oops, that might lead down another bumpy road. Or how about less politically charged figures, like Hercules or Beelzebub?

In the end, they decided to keep the Turkish Knight, and damn the torpedoes. None of their hosts took offence.

They have twice been commissioned to perform the mummers play outside the Christmas season--minus Brookes, who regards summer mummering as sacrilege. It failed miserably. The mummers play is not for tourists, Brookes insists: it is not an entertainment but a ritual with ancient purpose.

So, if it is not Christmas-specific for performers and audience, it is fake--like those quaint Morris Dances performed in South-East England on the well-groomed greens of dormitory villages occupied by brokers and bankers who commute daily into the City.

Whatever else it may be, the Newfoundland mummers play is not quaint. Within traditional boundaries of text and performance, it remains vital and irreverent, embracing improvisation, celebrating continuity and renewal, and responding to changing players, audiences and circumstances over the three decades that the tradition has been sustained by Brookes, O'Keefe, Rossiter and their mummering companions.

When eminent and much-loved folklorist Herbert Halpert passed away, full of years, during the Christmas season of 2000-2001, the mummers visited the wake to pay their respects with a song. Then they proceeded on their unappointed round of festive households, performing again the folk drama that Halpert's life-work had done so much to record and recover in Newfoundland.

Gordon Jones is a freelance theatre critic in St. John's.