Book of Exodus Part 1

Book of Exodus is the third part of the ‘innocence trilogy’, following On the Bodily Education of Young Girls and The Bacchae.  It presents the second book of the Hebrew Bible, almost without speech, using images and two child performers.  (There are two pairs of performers: Sol Feldman & Tarana Verma, and Ezra Justin & Malik Keegan, who will alternate.)

The playing space is dominated by a towering wall, while the foreground appears to be a deep field of broken stone.  The powerful and suggestive design is by Kate Davis, lighting by Emma Valente.  Figures arise from the debris: an old man and an old woman: Jacob and Rachel?  As things proceed, their identities change and they become Moses and Aaron, the names projected on the wall.

The two young child performers – a boy and a girl – do not ‘act’, as such, but one infers they are not meant to.  They remain children, that is, ‘innocent’, perhaps not even understanding the hugely significant nature of what they are representing – or, more accurately, understanding it in their own way. 

At one point, ‘Moses’ reads passages concerning the final plague visited upon Egypt by Yahweh – the murder of all Egyptian first-borns and the Angel of Death’s ‘Passover’ sparing the Israelites – but these terrifying events are conveyed without drama.  In fact, any ‘drama’ here is metaphoric, symbolic or abstract.  Emotion is evoked only by the contrast between the events presented (for instance, wounds painted on flesh or the smashing of the Commandment tablets) and the matter-of-fact, almost unconsciously banal way they are presented by the children.

Objects and items of clothing are discovered and extracted from the debris, enabling the children to create brief tableaux the meanings of which are sometimes accessible and powerful, at other times opaque.  Details are projected on the wall via a video camera. 

The program notes supply a very condensed version of the events of Exodus, but it is difficult, nevertheless, to find literal equivalents in the images presented to us.  Pre-show publicity stated that Book of Exodus ‘invokes spectacles of pure power: the plague, the burning bush, the Golden Calf and a community at the mercy of the law…’  Well, I’m afraid I don’t think so.

Director Adena Jacobs places enormous faith in the images she creates.  Perhaps it is not important, however, that the bulk of the audience will be unfamiliar with the source material: the ‘exodus’ of the Jews from Egypt, the handing down of the Commandments, Moses’ faltering leadership and so on.  Perhaps Ms Jacobs intends her images be seen and felt for their own sake.  The show lasts less than an hour, but, given the theatrical mode, it could scarcely go longer. 

This production then is in keeping with its predecessors in the trilogy: pushing boundaries, taking huge risks and subverting the source material via the use of images and ‘innocent’ children.  Whether the intention is quite clear or whether it works or not are other matters.

Book of Exodus Part 2 will be at Theatre Works in the second half of October this year.

Michael Brindley

Photographer: Pia Johnson