Ringing out the Changes
★★★★☆ Mindful
St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral (Venue 91): Thurs 7 – Thurs 21 Aug 2025
Review by Julia Amour
Ringing out the Changes at St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral – a mindful meditation of story and sound about how bells have marked personal, national and global histories – reverberates with meaning.
This unique performance piece is inspired by the installation in the cathedral of Edward Bruce’s huge colourful banners. They depict bellringing patterns, sweeping down from the vaulted bell-tower to the choir.
Jo Clifford (right) and the St Mary’s Cathedral Bellringers. Pic: Marion Chatterly
We first find out that the twelve bells of St Mary’s Cathedral are named after virtues: from justice to joy, from humility to hope. A sudden peal rings out: and with this insight, we do start to sense new meanings in their noises.
Jo Clifford, writer and narrator, advances her philosophy that all we need for a good life, a different life from the past, is symbolised in the bells.
Inspired by American and Australian indigenous traditions, she offers a thank you to mother earth: for the metals humans have used to make bells for four thousand years; and for the land beneath our feet, neglected, forgotten, misused, but still providing the essentials of life.
connection
As the bells sound again, we are focused on their connection to our planet, and the harmonics that ring out in tune with the physics of the universe.
It is very special to see the St Mary’s Cathedral Bellringers front and centre in this performance. They work, note-by-note to piece together a chime, in a visible demonstration of selfless skills and the amazing ability of human beings to co-operate.
Jo Clifford (right) and the St Mary’s Cathedral Bellringers in front of Edward Bruce’s banners. Pic: Marion Chatterly
Clifford also acknowledges a shadow side to this co-operative instinct: that our ancestors were often the ones to band together and strike out to colonise distant lands. A single bell tolls a warning, or a mourning, as she tells of how their plundered wealth and enslaved populations fuelled our industrial revolution.
Reflections on all the events the bells of St Mary’s have celebrated over the years take us to the jubilee in 1897 of Queen Victoria reigning over ‘the criminal empire on which the sun never set’. Clifford enjoins us to be aware and make amends by seeking to heal the wounds of colonial exploitation.
The reflections also turn personal, recalling the daily summoning by bells of Clifford’s boarding school: an authoritarian system that sought to instil in young boys the values of imperial masculinity to pave the way for aggression and bloodshed.
contemplative narrative
Clifford was eventually able to reject this identity that had been thrust upon her. The bells help ring out the changes as she celebrates things being brought into being that couldn’t be imagined or acknowledged in her childhood: the ordination of women priests; the recognition of non-binary genders.
This is a contemplative narrative seeking to create an intimate connection with the listener. It’s a tricky format, not inherently dramatic and more ritual than performance, and not all thematic links are as elegantly timed as the notes of the bells.
But by coming across as utterly herself, Clifford is a beguiling storyteller who speaks profoundly to those who need joy and hope to continue engaging with a world in chaos. She emphasises ‘quiet revolution’ as she brings us courage by focusing on the things that can change.
Charisma, from the Greek, originally meant a divine gift of grace freely given. Jo Clifford shows her magnetic gift of charisma here – to those who can slow down and listen – as she joins with the bells to sound out this call to quiet revolution.
Running time: One hour (no interval).
St Mary’s Episcopal Cathedral (Nave), Palmerston Place, EH12 5AW. (Venue 91)
Every Thursday in August 2025.
Thurs 7, 14, 21 & 28: 2.30pm.
Tickets and details: Book here.
Jo Clifford website: www.teatrodomundo.com
The bells, laid out ready. Pic: Marion Chatterly.
ENDS
