Holy Warriors: A Fantasia on the Third Crusade and the History of Violent Struggle in the Holy Lands

Description

There is one in the Kingdom of England. Who goes by the name of Richard the Lionheart. My waking dreams tell me he will come upon us. He will come to these lands and make pilgrimage, conquest. Saladin's great army have corrected a great wrong by taking Jerusalem back for Islam, after the barbaric slaughter of their people one hundred years ago. But for Muslim and Christian alike Jerusalem is a holy city. Across England and Outremer, nobles answer the call to arms from Richard the Lionheart to march on Jerusalem in the third crusade and retake the Holy City from Saladin. Holy Warriors is a tale of holy war, fraught diplomacy and revenge in the struggle for Jerusalem, taking in over a millennium of bloody conflict, as Richard the Lionheart marches east to face Saladin, and takes Jerusalem. This edition published to coincide with the play's premiere at Shakespeare's Globe, London, on 19 July 2014.

David Eldridge's full-length plays include Serving it Up (Bush Theatre, 1996); A Week with Tony (Finborough Theatre, 1996); Summer Begins (NT Studio and Donmar Warehouse, 1997); Falling (Hampstead Theatre, 1999); Under the Blue Sky (Royal Court Theatre, 2000, awarded Best New Play in the West End in 2001); Festen (Almeida and Lyric Theatre, 2004); M.A.D. (Bush Theatre, 2004); Incomplete and Random Acts of Kindness (Royal Court Theatre, 2005); a new version of Ibsen's The Wild Duck (Donmar Warehouse, 2005); Market Boy (National Theatre, 2006); a new version of Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman (Donmar Warehouse, 2007); Under the Blue Sky (Duke of York's Theatre, 2008); an adaptation of Jean-Marie Besset's Babylone (Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, 2009); A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky, co-written with Robert Holman and Simon Stephens (Lyric Hammersmith, 2010); a new version of Ibsen's The Lady from the Sea (Royal Exchange Theatre, 2010); and In Basildon (Royal Court, 2012).

'Eldridge has always been the most muscular of writers and in this bold and ambitious play he swaps Basildon for the Holy Land in a piece whose epic swagger and salty humour are ideally suited to the Globe' * Lyn Gardner, Guardian * 'The play is an epic that sweeps all before it' * The Arts Desk * 'It is a remarkable feat of narrative compression' * The Telegraph * 'A fundamental truth in matters of power, politics and sins on all sides committed in the name of religion and righteousness' * WhatsOnStage * Packed with big ideas and terrible war crimes * Daily Mail * . . . Eldridge is timely and bang up to date . . . * The Times * . . . this is a play whose charm resides in bold gesture . . . * Daily Telegraph * . . . David Eldgridge is getting to grips with the complex reasons our world . . . looks the way it does today. . . . there's no denying Eldridge's ambition. * Observer * . . . fantastically ambitious . . . I was gripped. . . . make no mistake that Holy Warriors is a brave, prodigious and rewarding experience. * Independent *