Plays, Verse
Plays & Musicals
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Childrens' Crusade (A
Musical)
* Also available on CD *
Reviews of the
original shorter version premiered in the Opera House in
1975 were “The best since Super Star. It builds
dramatically to a climax.” Maria Prerauer Opera critic
Daily Telegraph.
“The songs and
lyrics form a good score with many interesting melodies.”
Teddy Homes Chappells Music London.
A longer revised version is to be performed by St. Andrews
Cathedral School, Sydney in October 2009.
The Childrens’
Crusade occurred at a time of turbulence and unrest when
wandering troubadours were exciting popular imagination with
tales of the last crusade which had impoverished France. The
spark which kindled the Childrens’ Crusade was lit be an
orphaned 12 year old shepherd boy, Stephen, who claimed
Jesus had appeared in the field in St. Denis, where he was
minding sheep, and told him to tell the King to launch a new
crusade.
The surge of hope
driving these marches, that the world can be changed, is
expressed in this triumphant song:
Act 2 Scene 1 -
Like a Comet
Like a comet in the universe of time
our band will blaze across the dark
that glooms on every man.
We must call the world to hear.
We must march with sound of feet.
We must wake the silent beat
of man’s dead heart and ear.
And our cries will rise to echo through the mountains
and our battle blast will shatter all their walls
and a thousand years will hear reverberation
as our call will summon up, as our call will summon up
summon up our generation, summon up our generation.
Like a meteor astonishing the sky
Our cavalcade will burn its path
on children yet to come.
They will hear our words resound.
They will carry on our name.
They will bear our brandished flame
and walk on fiery ground.
They will shout about our gospel from the mountains
and their chanting reach beyond the seven seas
and our singing still will make reverberation
as our cries will tell it all
as our cries will tell it all.
Let them know our indignation.
Let them know our indignation.
Thirty thousand
crusaders – priests, nuns, knights and young men as well as
children – set out from Vendome, France, for Marseilles in
1212. Many fell by the wayside. The rest were trapped into
boarding the ships of slavers. Only one, a priest returned
to France 18 years later - sent by the Governor of Egypt to
tell the true end of their story, a legend that has
reverberated in history ever since.
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