Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur
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Program for David Freeman's Sir Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur, Lyric Theatre Hammersmith, St. Paul's Church. 19 July-20 October 1990.
As Kevin J. Harty wrote in his review of the play in Arthurian Interpretations (4. 2 [Spring 1990], pp. 88-90), 'Freeman has rightly chosen to cut or conflate episodes from his source,' and he frequently relies on 'simultaneity of action and extensive mime' to cover numerous episodes from Malory's narrative. The play was performed in two parts, requiring seven hours to complete; both performed partly in the Lyric Theatre Hammersmith and partly in St. Paul's. Incorporating the story of Arthur from birth to death, adventures of Round Table knights like Gareth and Gawain, the loves of Tristan and Iseult and Lancelot and Guinevere, and the quest for the Grail in one play, even a seven-hour production, is ambitious and necessarily subject to all kinds of criticism. But no other play or film has attempted to include so much of the vast scope of the Morte in one adaptation.