Jesus Christ Superstar is a sung-through rock opera with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber and lyrics by Tim Rice. Loosely based on the Gospels' accounts of the Passion, the work interprets the psychology of Jesus and other characters, with much of the plot centered on Judas, who is dissatisfied with the direction in which Jesus is steering his disciples. Contemporary attitudes, sensibilities and slang pervade the rock opera's lyrics, and ironic allusions to modern life are scattered throughout the depiction of political events. Stage and film productions accordingly contain many intentional anachronisms.
Murder in the Cathedral is a verse drama by T. S. Eliot, first performed in 1935. The play portrays the assassination of Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral during the reign of Henry II in 1170. Eliot drew heavily on the writing of Edward Grim, a clerk who was an eyewitness to the event.
The Passion is the short final period before the death of Jesus, described in the four canonical gospels. It is commemorated in Christianity every year during Holy Week.
Deryck Bower Guyler was an English actor, best remembered for his portrayal of officious, short-tempered middle-aged men in sitcoms such as Please Sir! and Sykes.
The Passion Play or Easter pageant is a dramatic presentation depicting the Passion of Jesus Christ: his trial, suffering and death. The viewing of and participation in Passion Plays is a traditional part of Lent in several Christian denominations, particularly in the Catholic and Evangelical traditions; as such Passion Plays are often ecumenical Christian productions.
Sykes is a British sitcom that aired on BBC 1 from 1972 to 1979. Starring Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques, it was written by Sykes, who had previously starred with Jacques in Sykes and a... (1960–1965) and Sykes and a Big, Big Show (1971). Forty-three of the 1970s colour episodes were remakes of scripts for the 1960s black and white series, such as "Bus" based on 'Sykes and a Following' from 1964 and the episode "Stranger" with Peter Sellers based on 'Sykes and a Stranger' from 1961.
In Christianity, the Great Commission is the instruction of the resurrected Jesus Christ to his disciples to spread the gospel to all the nations of the world. The Great Commission is outlined in Matthew 28:16–20, where on a mountain in Galilee Jesus calls on his followers to make disciples of and baptize all nations in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
BBC television dramas have been produced and broadcast since even before the public service company had an officially established television broadcasting network in the United Kingdom. As with any major broadcast network, drama forms an important part of its schedule, with many of the BBC's top-rated programmes being from this genre.
"Jesus wept" is a phrase famous for being the shortest verse in the King James Version of the Bible, as well as in many other translations. It is not the shortest in the original languages. The phrase is found in the Gospel of John, chapter 11, verse 35. Verse breaks—or versification—were introduced into the Greek text by Robert Estienne in 1551 in order to make the texts easier to cite and compare.
David Haig Collum Ward is an English actor and playwright. He has appeared in West End productions and numerous television and film roles over a career spanning four decades.
Luke 22 is the twenty-second chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It commences in the days just before the Passover or Feast of Unleavened Bread, and records the plot to kill Jesus Christ; the institution of the Lord's Supper; and the Arrest of Jesus and his trial before the Sanhedrin.
The York Mystery Plays, more properly the York Corpus Christi Plays, are a Middle English cycle of 48 mystery plays or pageants covering sacred history from the creation to the Last Judgment. They were traditionally presented on the feast day of Corpus Christi and were performed in the city of York, from the mid-fourteenth century until their suppression in 1569. The plays are one of four virtually complete surviving English mystery play cycles, along with the Chester Mystery Plays, the Towneley/Wakefield plays and the N-Town plays. Two long, composite, and late mystery pageants have survived from the Coventry cycle and there are records and fragments from other similar productions that took place elsewhere. A manuscript of the plays, probably dating from between 1463 and 1477, is still intact and stored at the British Library.
The Good Companions is a novel by the English author J. B. Priestley.
Robert Marsden was an English actor, director, dramatic recitalist and teacher of drama at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and elsewhere. He was also one of the earliest wartime members of the BBC Radio Drama Repertory Company, formed to meet the circumstances of World War II.
Alvin Rakoff is a Canadian director of film, television and theatre productions. He has worked with actors including Laurence Olivier, Peter Sellers, Sean Connery, Judi Dench, Rex Harrison, Rod Steiger, Henry Fonda and Ava Gardner.
The Men from the Ministry is a British radio comedy series broadcast by the BBC between 1962 and 1977, starring Wilfrid Hyde-White, Richard Murdoch and, from 1966, when he replaced Hyde-White, Deryck Guyler. Written and produced by Edward Taylor with contributions from John Graham, and with some early episodes written by Johnnie Mortimer and Brian Cooke, it ran for 13 series, totalling 145 half-hour episodes and two specials. A further 14 episodes were made by the BBC Transcription Service in 1980 but never broadcast in the UK, until 2012 on BBC Radio 4 Extra. Versions were made by Yle in Finland, Sveriges Radio (SR) in Sweden, and Springbok Radio in South Africa, where it was made into a feature-length film.
Raymond Montgomery Raikes was a British theatre producer, director and broadcaster. He was particularly known for his productions of classic dramas for BBC Radio's "World Theatre" and "National Theatre of the Air" series, which pioneered the use of stereophonic sound in radio drama broadcasts. He received two Prix Italia awards in 1965 for his stereophonic productions of The Foundling by A. R. Gurney and The Anger of Achilles by Robert Graves.
Passion Plays in the United Kingdom have had a long and complex history involving faith and devotion, civic pageantry, antisemitism, religious and political censorship, large-scale revival and historical re-enactments. The origin and history of Passion Play in the UK differs substantially from Passion Plays in Europe, South and North America, Australia and other parts of the world.
BBC Radio Drama is a London-based group within the BBC Radio operational business division of the BBC. BBC Radio Drama oversees the production and broadcast of radio dramas aired on the BBC Radio network. Radio dramas had been broadcast even before the public service company had an officially established radio broadcasting network in the United Kingdom. Thus, the work of the BBC Radio Drama group also pre-dates the 1967 conversion of BBC Radio from a single national station into four separate, specialized national stations; since 1967, the BBC radio dramas are broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio 4.
