The Players of St. Peter have now moved to St. George in the East, which is further to go, but is still quite easy to get to, as it is quite near Shadwell Station.
I went to the 6.30 p.m. performance, as I had nothing else on that evening - they always have two performances, one at 6.30 p.m. and the other at 8.30 p.m. throughout a whole week at the beginning of December.
Their previous home, in St. Clement Eastcheap, where they had been for several years, was very small and far from ideal - there were no toilets or catering facilities, and seating was limited and not terribly comfortable. Also there was nowhere to wait indoors if you arrived early for the second performance - if it were raining, as it sometimes was, you just had to wait outside in the rain. St. George's, on the other hand, is a large church with every facility, including a much bigger stage.
The production was, as usual, excellent - and this time there were refreshments at the interval, including, of course, mince pies.
The Players of St. Peter were formed in 1946 in St. Peter-upon-Cornhill, which was where I first saw them perform. St. Peter's had atmosphere, but again wasn't really ideal, though they were there for forty years, before moving to Holy Trinity Sloane Square for a ten year stint, from which they later moved to St. Clement Eastcheap in the City.
The plays themselves are as faithful as possible to the originals of six hundred years ago, thought with some modern innovations such as electric lighting and an organ. The language used is as far as possible the same, with a few adaptations to make it comprehensible to modern audiences - thought it is remarkable just how little the language had changed in all that time.
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