PENTECOST was first produced at The Other Place, Stratford-Upon-Avon, in October 1994. The play is set in an abandoned church in an unnamed Eastern European country shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall. A 13th-century fresco has just been discovered by a young curator from the country’s national museum. If proved to predate the works of Giotto, as suspected, the work could explode accepted notions about European art. In Act 1, the authenticity of the fresco is passionately debated in a prolonged and provocative discussion that ranges from the fallacy of cultural relativism to the increasing disillusionment of Eastern European society in the post-Soviet order.
Then, without warning, a group of armed and desperate refugees barricade themselves inside the church, taking hostage the Western art experts inside. The refugees range in ethnicity from Palestinian to Kurd to Bosnian and the second act details increasingly tense negotiation and argumentation, leading to a shocking and visceral conclusion.
