WHAT A LAUGH by Fran Brady
Easter Monday and I am thinking of the first time I offered my services to the Edinburgh Easter Play. It was the earliest Easter for forty-odd years: the third weekend in March. It was also possibly the coldest, with Princes Street Gardens showing only a few snowdrops pushing through rock hard ground. I had been enthralled since The Play began three years before, watching the actors in biblical dress enacting some famous lead-up scenes: the loaves and the fishes; Jesus routing the unscrupulous vendors outside the temple; the Pharisees debating Jesus’ fate; the last supper; and Judas’ act of betrayal. And then, the climactic scenes: Jesus tried, condemned and flogged; Gethsemane; Jesus carrying his cross; the Crucifixion; and the Resurrection. It is a ‘promenade play’, in the style of a medieval passion play. The Gardens, with their stunning backdrop of Edinburgh Castle, provide plenty of spots for the various scenes. The cross is carried by a sagging, bleeding Jesus (very ef...