TS Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral review – gather in wonder at David Suchet’s excellent archbishop

David Suchet gives a meticulous, compelling performance as Thomas Becket in a church staging of TS Eliot’s *Murder in the Cathedral*. The production’s setting and atmosphere bring the 1935 verse drama’s conflict between religious conviction and political power into focus.

Staged at St John the Divine in London, the play revisits Becket’s murder by four knights in 1170, amid a dispute between church and state. Suchet’s precise acting is especially effective in Becket’s Christmas Day sermon, while the review notes that musicalised women’s choruses sometimes obscure Eliot’s poetry and that the play’s ending feels unusually modern. The production runs until 7 November.