Murder in the Cathedral
written by T. S. Eliot
directed by Terry McCabe
music by Philip Seward
May 8, 2024 - June 16, 2024
Winner non-Equity Jeff award — Best Costume
nominated non-equity jeff award - Best Performer in a play (non-musical)
The first full production in Chicago since the early 1950s (though there have been concert readings from time to time) of Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot, author of Cats and a series of letters to Groucho Marx, among other works. The play dramatizes the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the hands of knights loyal to Henry II in 1170. Eliot wrote it on commission to be performed in the sanctuary at Canterbury Cathedral, the room where Becket was murdered; his depiction of the killing draws from the eye-witness account of Edward Grim, a monk who was wounded trying to protect the Archbishop. This production was staged in the sanctuary of Edgewater Presbyterian Church, the building in which City Lit resides.
