John's Church, Pembroke.

You certainly can't accuse the BMDS of failing to rise to new challenges. The society has presented us with a host of different genres over the past few years, with everything from Shakespeare to Hancock being put on the stage.

`Mummers, Mysteries and Mayhem' takes as it's starting point a collection of stories from the Old Testament. However, what was on display last night was no Nativity Play for grown-ups. The twist comes in that the entire cast were delivering their lines as actors - or rather guild members -- living in Merry Olde England of a thousand years ago.

BMDS's aim -- according to the the programme notes -- is to "re-create the sense of drama and excitement that would have surrounded the performance of these plays that were annual events on feast days during the first five hundred years of the last Millennium.'' Interested? Well I must admit that it was with some foreboding that I headed for St. John's Church last night.

For one, I must confess it's been a while since I last parked my backside on a church pew and the idea of sitting through a few hours of fire and brimstone seemed a bit heavy.

On top of that, as a youngster I could never get to grips with Shakespeare at school, finding the language too clumsy and unintelligible. How on earth would I be able to cope with dialogue of a thousand years ago? With such a pessimistic outlook it's not surprising that last night's show should turn out to be so enjoyable. Clearly there are a few lessons that I had forgotten. Firstly that the Bible really does contain some cracking good yarns full of drama, warmth, humour and tragedy that are just as relevant today.

Joseph's (Dennis Eldrige) reaction on learning that his virgin wife is pregnant was straight out of a television sitcom misunderstanding.) As for the language barrier, the cast were able to deliver dialogue full of charming poetry.

This brings me to another reason why last night's show was so enchanting -- the BMDS cast themselves, who as ever, provided some brilliant individual performances, often playing several characters in what was an extremely challenging script. To not only learn it, but to present it in such an entertaining and professional manner, is a credit to the society.

Last night's programme was split into two chunks, the first of which contained four bite-sized acts from the Old Testament, including `The Creation and the Fall of Lucifer', The Creation of Adam and Eve', `The Fall of Man' and `The Annunciation', all of which were topped off by a Christmas Mumming play, `The play of Prince George' written about one thousand years ago it's easy to see it as an ancient predecessor of the modern pantomime.

Particularly strong in the key roles were Paul MacCoy, who stole the show as the devilishly menacing Lucifer, and Robbie Godfrey, who went through a series of characters throughout the night from Lucifer to Adam to Jesus Christ. Also putting in excellent performances were the saintly Kate Huntington (can she really be that virtuous?) and Jo Shane, who did a pretty good job as God.

The society was brave enough not to try and stick too closely to recreating in exact detail a production that might have been put on the stage (if such a thing existed) a thousand years or so ago.

The use of a narrator to steer the audience through each scene was an excellent idea and perhaps made the performance more accessible.

Once again this is a challenging yet entertaining piece of theatre that the BMDS has tackled brilliantly. The production runs again tonight and tomorrow.

If you haven't been to church recently here's a good reason to.

GARETH FINIGHAN THEATRE THR REVIEW REV