Cast Set For City Lit Theater's MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL

Full cast and production team have been announced for City Lit’s season-closing production of MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL by T.S. Eliot, the Nobel Prize winner considered to be one of the 20th Century’s greatest poets. He is also acclaimed for his plays and essays, but today is probably best known as the author of the poems set to music by Andrew Lloyd Webber for CATS. MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL dramatizes the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the hands of knights loyal to King Henry II in 1170. City Lit’s production will be staged environmentally in the sanctuary of Edgewater Presbyterian Church, the building in which City Lit resides; and will feature an original musical score by Philip Seward. MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL will run from May 3 through June 16, 2024.  Press opening will be May 12, 2024.

City Lit’s outgoing Producer and Artistic Director Terry McCabe, who is directing the play, announced his cast today. James Sparling (pictured), who has appeared in many City Lit productions, notably as Sherlock Holmes in such mysteries as THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES and THE SEVEN PER-CENT SOLUTION, and most recently in 2023’s THE BIRTHDAY PARTY, will lead the cast as Becket.

The cast will also include Katarina Bakes (Chorus), John Blick (Second Priest), Kara Chandler (Chorus), Stephen Fedo (First Priest), Sean Harklerode (First Tempter/First Knight), Varris Holmes (Third Tempter, Third Knight), Robert Howard (Second Tempter/Second Knight), Zach Kunde (Messenger, Fourth Knight), Sally Olson (Chorus), Joel Thompson (Third Priest), and Isabel Schmitz (Chorus). The production team will be Mike McShane (lighting design), Patti Roeder (costume design), Paul Chakrin (fight choreography), and Carrie Hardin (dialect coach).
 
Eliot wrote MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL 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. It became one of the first live television dramas in history when televised in 1936 by the BBC during their first few months of operation. City Lit’s MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL will be the play’s first full production in Chicago of the play since the early 1950s (though there have been concert readings from time to time). The play dramatizes the martyrdom of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the hands of knights loyal to Henry II in 1170. 
 

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