Staircases is an unusual and interesting show currently being presented at Trinity St. Paul’s by Tafelmusik.  The show is the brainchild of Alison Mackay collaborating with baritone Jonathan Woody.  Who knew a “simple” set of stairs could carry so many meanings?  We are taken from ceremonial staircases at Versailles and the Vatican to the banks of the frozen Thames to the hidden meanings of the Monument to the Great Fire and more to a most surprising conclusion.  All of this rooted in the idea of the rock staircase on Mount Parnassus that leads to the home of Apollo and the Muses.

The show combines spoken word (narrated beautifully by Woody) and music with evocative projections by Laura Warren.  Among other scenes there’s Madame de Pompadour dancing the “Chaconne de Galatée” from Lully’s Acis et Galatée on a set built on the Ambassadors Staircase at Versailles, suitably frosty music from Purcell for the fair on the frozen Thames more ceremony from the Pope’s stairs at the Vatican.

We meet Bach and Vivaldi teaching in rooms atop staircases.  I wonder if either knew that the Welsh word “ysgolion” means both “school” and “ladder”; a thing one ascends.  All this is a splendid excuse for some sumptuous visuals and lovely playing of excerpts from assorted concerti, suites and sonatas with Handel, Corelli, Fux, Bach, Vivaldi and Platti all making an appearance.

And so to the conclusion inspired by the “Door of no return” at Elmina in Ghana down whose steps many descended to the slave ships never to see Africa again. It’s the jumping off point for Jonathan Woody’s three movement work The Unbounded Soul based on the life of Phyllis Wheatley; an enslaved woman who became a notable scholar, poet and abolitionist.  Rococo putti give way to wrought iron shackles; courtly pleasures to crowded slave decks; sumptuous palaces to log cabins.  Woody doesn’t spare us the obvious connections.  Louis XIV not only built Versailles but chartered La compagnie française des Indes occidentales.  Handel was an investor in the Royal African Company.  The history lesson is artfully supported by new music by Woody combined with Wheatley’s poetry which takes us on a journey from the despair of the enslaved to a passionate invocation of the power of human creativity.  It’s moving and very beautiful.

Staircases plays again tonight (Saturday) and tomorrow afternoon at Trinity St. Paul’s.

Photo credit: Dahlia Katz