May 27, 2025

Skirting Heresy (The Story of Margery Kempe of Lynn) with Vanessa Wood-...


"Skirting Heresy" is the title of an epic play by New York author Elizabeth MacDonald which I edited for a production in Lynn Minster in 2018, mainly adding several existing songs from a previous play of my own which which you'll find on the Peacock's album  peacocks-tale.bandcamp.com/album/a-mas…for-margery and - in different versions - on the album the Penland Phezants ( Andy Wall, Vanessa, Melanie and me) created for the Skirting Heresy show. Andy and Vanessa wrote the folk tunes; I wrote the lyrics and the beat-based rap and chant bits. The "Skirting Heresy" score is collected on thepenlandphezants.bandcamp.com/album/son…ery-kempe
This track "Skirting Heresy" using the title of the play as a refrain was written by Andy and I to cover a lengthy curtain call for the epic cast of 70 and to tell the whole story of the Book in a summary form. We both rather extended ourselves and we were all still performing it about 4 minutes after the epic curtain call ended! I recall pointedly singing "You're a menace to churchman but a mystic to me" to possibly the least facilitating churchman ever to host a play about one of his most famous ancestral parishioners.
This is the abridged Peacock version. The full Peacock version is here-  soundcloud.com/gareth-calway/skirting-heresy-in-full
The lovely upbeat Andy-led folk performance is on the Phezants album link above. This version features the three other performers on that track (adding Vanessa's beautifully measured harp to our usual Peacock duo) taking it somewhere more mediaeval.

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