Musical Chaucer

Aprille with his shoures sote has arrived, and the lusty Wife of Bath, the boozy Miller, the testy Reeve and the greedy Merchant are all getting happily sloshed once more, along with the jolly Host of the wayside Tabard Inn. To Londoners' delight, Chaucer's Canterbury Tales has been turned into a rollicking, raunchy musical comedy. The wonder is that nobody has ever tried to do the same thing before.

Most of the credit goes to Oxford's Nevill Coghill, the English literature professor who has long coached the university's famed Dramatic Society and recently directed several highbrow commercial productions, including the Burton-Taylor movie of Marlowe's Dr. Faustus (TIME, Feb. 23). Four years ago, Coghill dramatized his 1951 edition of the Tales to celebrate the 650th anniversary of Oxford's Exeter College; then a record company commissioned some music from Composers Richard Hill and John Hawkins to go along with a recorded version. The Hill-Hawkins blend of medieval piety and modern pop seemed just right; so the project was expanded into its present musical-comedy form.

Only four of the original 24 tales are used--two in each act. But Chaucer loses remarkably little from the abridgement. First comes the Miller's Tale of Nicholas, the Oxford stud, Absolon, the clerk, and their rivalry for sexy Alison. Then comes the Reeve's account of the hot pillow goings-on in the Miller's family. The show's multiple bed hoppings are cleverly managed by representing the beds with vertically hung sheets and blankets, behind which the actors slip in and out.

The second act consists of the Merchant's Tale (in which Wilfrid Bram-bell regularly stops the show with a prenuptial bossanova in a nightshirt), followed by the Wife of Bath's moral story of the overamorous Knight and the witch who turns into a beautiful young girl when she is convinced that he really loves her.

The pilgrims gather for a fitting finale at the candlelit cathedral shrine of St. Thomas a Becket, and a choral reprise of the prioress' and the nun's earlier simple duet:

For amor vincit omnia Whatever may befall, The seven sins will have their day, But they will all be done away, And love will conquer all.

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