David Suchet Plays Thomas Becket in St John the Divine Staging of TS Eliot Classic

David Suchet plays Archbishop Thomas Becket in a new production of TS Eliot's Murder in the Cathedral at St John the Divine church in London, opposite the Orange Tree theatre. Tom Littler, the Orange Tree's artistic director, co-directs with Francesca Ellis.

The venue choice isn't a gimmick. Eliot's verse drama was first performed in 1935 at Canterbury Cathedral — the very place where, in 1170, Henry II's knights killed Archbishop Thomas Becket during a dispute over the powers of church and state. Ever since, productions have tended to borrow church naves rather than theatre aisles, making the building itself part of the play's mechanism.

What does the site-specific framing change?

A site-specific production (staged in a real location matching the play's setting, rather than a purpose-built theatre) collapses the distance between audience and event. The congregation of spectators stands in, roughly, for the congregation of Canterbury worshippers who witnessed the murder. That's the design logic behind staging the piece at St John the Divine rather than up the road in a conventional auditorium.

The production also continues a London pattern: the Orange Tree's own building sits directly opposite the host church, which lets Littler extend his theatre's footprint without leaving its immediate neighbourhood.

How does Suchet's Becket land?

The Guardian's review is admiring. It praises a "striking example of site-specific theatre" and finds that the meticulous star plays Thomas Becket "with a Shakespearean relish".

The critic is candid about the material's difficulty. Eliot's 1935 verse drama "has its eccentricities", the review notes — a fair warning that this is choral, liturgical writing, not naturalistic dialogue. Suchet's performance, the review's verdict suggests, is what holds the piece together: audiences are invited, in the paper's phrasing, to "gather in wonder" at his archbishop.

Why this play keeps returning

Murder in the Cathedral endures partly because its core question travels well. Becket's death in 1170 turned on the clash between royal authority and church power; Eliot, writing in the mid-1930s, gave that confrontation a contemporary edge. Staged in an actual working church, with a star actor of Suchet's pedigree in the lead, the dispute between conscience and state plays out at close range to the audience.

For viewers weighing a trip: this is the current London host for a play whose natural homes have always been sacred spaces, and the pairing of Suchet with a real nave is the production's central draw.