Hornchurch Extrordinary Easter Passion Play Peformed.

7th April 20267th April 2026 Francesca Lilleystone 0 Comments Easter, Easter Passion Play, Hornchurch min read

By Ruth Kettle-Frisby – Guest Writer and Community Activist

Ruth is passionate about fostering positive change within the local community and regularly contributes insights and stories to The Havering Daily.

This Easter weekend, Havering residents were treated to the extraordinary marvel that was Hornchurch Passion Play, performed open air on Queen’s Theatre Green.

Hornchurch Passion Play began in 1995 as a result of the prophecy of a woman named Ruth and the mystic vision of Ferddie Sayer, and has been produced every four to five years (save Covid pandemic delays) since. Having seen the play, this time lapse is more than fitting given the impressive investment in time, energy, logistics and skill involved in such an undertaking by volunteers and local construction companies in and for our community here in Havering.

With a cast, choir and band of up to eighty – and nightly audiences in our thousands – this iconic play was nothing short of a local triumph.

Like many of us here in the UK, I’ve grown up with the saccharine depictions of Jesus as a slightly creepy white man with long silky fair hair, when of course he would have been a Middle-Eastern Jewish man, and as such it was something of a relief to see him being portrayed by a person of colour.

Shane Mathews is brilliant as Jesus, conveying quiet wisdom alongside a range of fragile emotions in the last days of Christ. Terrified pleas, faithful acceptance, and loving interpersonal truths long-forgotten by adults with various shades of power shape this familiar narrative for a modern audience; Jesus is positioned as a fun-loving, vulnerable, and all too human presence among his friends and enemies alike.

As this difficult story unfolds – hurtling closer to Jesus’ unjust, yet divinely determined fate – a series of iconic moments include: The Last Supper; his betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane; his subsequent arrest by Roman soldiers, who are clad menacingly in the immediacy of modern army uniform; and culminate in his harrowing and bloody crucifixion, followed by eventual hope-filled resurrection.

The emotion was heightened at all times by the physical positioning of the audience-cum-crowd, as boundaries between the two became blurred. We followed Jesus from expertly constructed stage to stage, and actors were dispersed among the audience, sometimes hurling abuse towards the stage.

The exciting proximity created by this theatric immersion prompted unsettling questions such as: “Would I have had the courage to back truth and justice in a similar situation?” and “How would I have regarded those who actively chose not to?”

Characters including Judas and Pontious Pilate are delicately humanised. For example, when Jesus’ trial places Pontius Pilate at the pinnacle of an excruciating moral dilemma: his wife’s conviction of Jesus’ rightful release versus a baying mob. Religion is complicated, but the simple maxim that we love Jesus when we love each other was bestowed with a refreshing credibility in Mathews’ distinctly warm, down to earth and sincere cadence.

This production was a textured one, conjuring the sense that Judas lives in all of us every day, but that so too does Peter and the wise and gentle Mary of Bethany. Jesus turns the tables on lofty ideas of holiness with their inherent tendency towards hypocrisy, preferring instead to party in temples like children, who are in turn recognised as natural embodiments of true faith.

Under Simon Pugsley’s direction, this stirring production was anything but a gaudy retelling of an old and irrelevant story. Whether or not we adopt the Christian faith in our lives, the deeply challenging themes centred in this production managed to uphold interpersonal fellowship above personal salvation, offering a fresh and potentially healing point of access to the teachings of Christ.

Photo credit: Peter Barrett