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Paulson, Julie, 'Death's Arrival and Everyman's Separation', Theatre Survey 48.1 (2007): 121-41

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King, Pamela M., 'Morality Plays' in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Theatre, eds Richard Beadle and Alan J. Fletcher (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 235-62.

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Garner Jr, Stanton B., 'Theatricality in Mankind and Everyman', Studies in Philology 84.3 (1987): 272-85

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Ordinary people doing ordinary things, dramatised within the extraordinary
------- Everyman

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http://www.splendidproductions.co.uk/productions/everyman.php

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t may, at first, seem strange that Rufus Norris has chosen to open his personal account as the National Theatre's director with a 15th-century morality play. But what was originally church propaganda has been turned, in Carol Ann Duffy's stunning adaptation, into a scathing assault on the myopic materialism of the modern age and a reminder of our own mortality. As Everyman, the remarkable Chiwetel Ejiofor also graphically traces the protagonist's progress to spiritual enlightenment.

The big achievement of both Duffy and Norris is keep the framework of the original while suiting the content to a secular society. God is here merged with the figure of Good Deeds and embodied by Kate Duchene as a cleaning-woman with Marigolds and bucket. Everyman is also a sharp-suited figure first seen celebrating his 40th birthday with a hedonistic wingding full of coke, booze and, in Javier De Frutos 's choreography, wild, swirling dance. But when Death, in the figure of Dermot Crowley clutching a shopping-bag rather than scythe, comes calling, Everyman is forced to account for his life. Deserted by friends, family and goods, he finds solace only in a dosser named Knowledge (Penny Layden) who enables him to face Death with a new-found humility.

There is a potential problem in seeing a rich tosser in the high-income bracket as a modern Everyman but Duffy solves it by suggesting he symbolises our indifference to the future of the planet. God, at the outset, tells us: "The angels weep to see the ruin of the Earth." Everyman's prime sin also lies not so much in seeing money as solution to any problem as in ignoring ecological reality. The most extraordinary moment in Norris's production comes when Ian MacNeil's design, Paul Anderson's lighting and Paul Arditti's sound combine to simulate the effect of a tsunami. While nothing can match the horror of the actual event, the audience is given a salutary jolt and reminded that we share Everyman's purblind folly when he ruefully says: "I thought the Earth was mine to spend, a coin in space."

Chiwetel Ejiofor's Everyman is forced to face the spiritual consequences of his materialist life. Photograph: Tristram Kenton/The Guardian

This, in short, is an Everyman for today and in Ejiofor the lead role finds an ideal interpreter. He captures excellently the heedless swagger of the birthday-boy hero. He is very touching in the scene where he confronts his scooter-riding young self and owns up to a life of self-gratification. But Ejiofor is at his best in the play's closing moments when he acknowledges the miracle of life while accepting the reality of death. The whole point of the play is that, in 90 minutes, it traces the hero's progress from ignorance to knowledge and that is something Ejiofor conveys with admirable clarity.

Even in a version as brilliant as this there is a moment that jars when God/Good Deeds tells us: "Religion is a man-made thing. It too will pass." This seems a gratuitous stroke in a story that shows precisely where a materialistic individualism has led us. Otherwise Duffy has given us a rich text full of haunting lines such as the sudden recollection of "the mad joy of a school playground". Duffy's poetry is underscored by William Lyons 's eclectic music and faithfully realised by Norris's virtuosic production that captures both the frantic dizziness of a money-driven world and the beckoning finality of death.

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Everyman review - Chiwetel Ejiofor's rich sinner feels modern wrath of God

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t may, at first, seem strange that Rufus Norris has chosen to open his personal account as the National Theatre's director with a 15th-century morality play. But what was originally church propaganda has been turned, in Carol Ann Duffy's stunning adaptation, into a scathing assault on the myopic materialism of the modern age and a reminder of our own mortality.