Judith - A Review

The last play I reviewed I had very mixed feelings about. Judith by Julian Olf I’m much more of one mind: I didn’t like it.

There are a variety of reasons for this, which I’ll get into, but first: a rundown.

Judith is an adaptation of the Book of Judith, a Deuterocanonical book considered part of the Christian canon for Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christian sects, but not considered scripture by either Jews or Protestants. Growing up Lutheran myself, I had never heard this story until yesterday afternoon. Though frankly, even if it had been part of the Old Testament I’d grown up with, I’d still probably know nothing. My ignorance on matters biblical could fill an ark.

The story is pretty simple: Judith (a luminous Marya Lowery) is an exceptionally pious Jew who has spent the past few years in mourning for her dead husband. In the meantime, the Persian army led by a general by the name of Holofernes is set to lay waste to the city of Israelites. He’s already cut off the water supply, and the temple leader (ably played by Scott Richards) is about to allow the consumption of non-Kosher food to alleviate his starving population. Incensed by the threatened broken covenant, Judith, along with her maidservant Rachel (a competent Kin Conner, a talent clearly deprived of better material) manage to infiltrate their way into the Persian camp where she offers to help the general cleanse the earth from her people as soon as they break their sacred vows. The general (played with such charm by Bob Knopf) is intrigued and soon beguiled by this fearless woman, and the two soon become quite close over a romantic meal shared in his tent. He quickly falls head over heels in love with her, and despite still vowing to destroy her home, he asks for her hand in marriage. Instead she secrets herself and her maid back into town in the middle of the night whereupon we discover she’s cut off his head.

Now, there are definitely things I liked about this play. Primarily the performances. Marya Lowery is a god-damned force of nature. She manages to somehow summon up the rage of a storm in her frequent “conversations” with God. She is a woman simultaneously wounded and angry and confused and indignant with the flame of the righteous. She’s an actress that seems destined to play Eleanor of Aquitaine in The Lion in Winter. Likewise, Bob Knopf was absolutely magnetic as the jaded General Holofernes. He had such a natural and effortless ease with this character. The scenes involving both of these characters were almost always gripping.

I say, “almost always”, because these two were working against one leviathan of a script. There are three acts, and most of the second act flits back and forth between Judith and Holofernes and Rachel and a Unich with a libido. The conversations frankly lapse into romantic drivel that seems ripped from the clichés of romantic comedies and the most heavy handed of chic lit “meet-cutes”. Moreover, the length of these dates is interminable. Seriously. Even the prowess of Lowery and Knopf weren’t enough to make me space out a few times after the fourth or fifth time we jump from one blind date to the next.

To be fair, the playwright was obviously highly invested on selling this budding romance between the two leads, and it certainly worked. Despite the fact that they’d just met, I did buy that these character had developed a fast and deep connection, though I wonder how much of that has to do with the sheer force of charisma expended by both of the actors involved. And to be fair once again, it is the selling of that relationship which causes the ultimate betrayal/sacrifice to be so simultaneously shocking and poignant when Judith reveals the severed head of her almost-fiancé.

It is that reveal that in some ways redeems the drudgery of most of the play. As the play progressed I kept trying to identify the themes. What was the playwright trying to say with this work? Judith is appalled at the very idea of the breaking of Kosher and indeed much of the conflict seems to be about fealty towards the laws of God. But when the reveal at the end shows to what lengths she has gone to protect her own people, at the cost of her own love and happiness, the plays’ message then seems to retroactively be focused on sacrifice. But then, are the Jewish people’s plight to be explained as their way of “sacrificing” for their Almighty? Perhaps these questions are beyond my grasp and are better left for the Seder table, but as an atheist they are certainly beyond my interest.

The protagonist herself seems to be a miasma of motives. Judith seems simultaneously furious at God’s caprice and unrelentingly pious. It’s not that I mind complex multi-dimensional characters, but regardless of what position the character takes she always turns it up to eleven. Judith may inhabit many perspectives throughout the play but “nuanced” is not an adjective I would use to describe the character.

In a more technical complaint, the dialogue veers from the appropriately archaic to modern vernacular. The end result is a confusing mishmash of tones. Even when speaking in the high falutin tongue of the religiously fervent the effect is not one of poetry, but of stilted prose. Leaden declarative statements litter the play like blunt detritus on a beach to such an extent that I occasionally wondered if it had originally been written in English.

But I guess at the end of the day, I’m still not exactly sure what I was supposed to take away from this story. It’s quite possible that this play is simply not meant to appeal to a secular mindset, in which case: that’s totally fine, but if so then I question why it was presented in a venue which welcomes general audiences. Regardless, I know I may sound overly harsh, but in the words of Queen Victoria: “We are not amused.”