Passion Play - the Oberammergau Tales in Aussie Readers

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Jan 11, 2014 Kathryn rated it really liked it

Shelves: australian-authors, reading-list-2015, 4-stars, fiction, released-2013

I liked the concept of this - a group of about 20 people from different walks of life who join a tour to travel to see the Passion Play in Oberammergau. It is reflective of the Canterbury Tales by Chaucer - stories told to entertain pilgrims as they travelled - although thankfully in contemporary English, as the old English is difficult to read!

What surprised me when I first opened the book was that it was written in verse. Not rhyming or following a certain rhythm, I guess it’s free verse. Poet ...more

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Jan 02, 2014 Anne Hamilton rated it it was amazing

Shelves: australia-nz, poetry

Over six hundred years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer imagined a motley group of pilgrims making the trek to Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of Thomas à Beckett. To while away the tedium of their journey, each spins a story to entertain the others. Immortalised as The Canterbury Tales, the verse is as varied in theme and genre (if we can speak of ‘genre’ centuries before it officially existed) as those who tell each yarn.

In Passion Play: The Oberammergau Tales, Chaucer's knight, squire, prioress and Over six hundred years ago, Geoffrey Chaucer imagined a motley group of pilgrims making the trek to Canterbury Cathedral and the shrine of Thomas à Beckett. To while away the tedium of their journey, each spins a story to entertain the others. Immortalised as The Canterbury Tales, the verse is as varied in theme and genre (if we can speak of ‘genre’ centuries before it officially existed) as those who tell each yarn.

In Passion Play: The Oberammergau Tales, Chaucer's knight, squire, prioress and man of law all have their modern counterpart, along with many others. I particularly liked the update of three different religious figures wittily portrayed as a TV evangelist, an earnest parish priest experiencing a crisis of faith and a bishop expecting a promotion.

Chaucer’s perceptive and subtly-tendered observations of human nature have delighted readers for more than half a millennium. Here too are many perceptive and subtly-tendered observations of human nature in the twenty-first century.

The fine art of pilgrimage is still alive and well in the third millennium. Every ten years when the Passion Play is performed in the small Bavarian village of Oberammergau, over half a million visitors go to see it. Valerie Volk starts her verse novel Passion Play: The Oberammergau Tales with a prologue, explaining the genesis of the play. Four centuries ago, Oberammergau shut itself off from the world, all the better to protect itself from the ravaging plague outside its locked and bolted gates. But Kaspar Schisler, anxious about the wife he left behind, fretting about her faithfulness and the temptation to which she might be subjected, knows the secret ways into the town. He makes his way home to her and his family, unknowingly bringing the plague with him. In an attempt to halt its progress, the villagers make a vow: once every ten years they will perform a drama showing the passion and death of Jesus Christ. This historical event forms the backdrop to The Oberammergau Tales.

Valerie Volk’s modern pilgrims have all the conveniences Chaucer’s characters lacked. They are off on a bus trip to see the event. An introductory party, an efficient tour guide, a diverse cast with complex motivations for participating in the trip. It soon transpires everyone has a secret.

The part of ‘mine host’ is played effectively by Caroline, a journalist on the prowl for personal information about the others to form the basis of a travel feature. However Caroline is tormented by her own secret: she is the ‘other woman’ in her boss’ life and she fears this trip is his goodbye gesture.

One by one, the troubled characters reveal the inner darkness of their private lives. The subdued voice of conscience is evident in the varying degrees of guilt and shame the characters experience. Their reactions range across a wide spectrum of emotion: anger, arrogance, nightmare-induced fear, desperation, desire, depression.

Like Chaucer, Valerie Volk has a keen eye for human frailty. Like Chaucer, she presents it with compassionate, empathic acuity and a warm, generous tone.

Clever, artful and deft in its avoidance of sermonising, The Oberammergau Tales is a poetic treat in conversational free verse from beginning to end. The ‘pen portraits’ of the twenty-one characters which appear as silhouettes atop the pages add the last cherry to this absorbing update of one of the great English classics.

It's not going to be everyone's cup of tea but I enjoyed it thoroughly.
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