12.09.1996

Action sundered

Helen Ellis reviews Judith, a parting from the body, by Howard Barker (Battersea Arts Centre)

Judith was first performed in 1990 and, as with much of Barker’s writing, is heavily influenced by the experience and collapse of the Soviet Union. But it would be churlish to suggest that this is what Barker’s plays are about. His texts dig deep into the relationship between the individual and society, between the state, ideology and ideals, imagination and the sensuous.

Today the play contains perhaps more resonance than our perceptions could fully comprehend in the immediate aftermath of that collapse. The Wrestling School theatre company has then done us a service in producing this play today - at a time in which the overbearing power of oppressive states weighs down on us physically and ideologically, trapping both our physical and mental world into a force which is beyond our own control.

The Wrestling School has developed a theatrical process no less suited to Barker’s work today than at its formation in 1988. The performances of the three characters - Judith, a widow of Israel, Holofernes, general of Assyria and the servant described as an ideologist - drag you into the imaginative and speculative world of the play.

Barker uses the biblical, apocryphal story of the Jewish heroine seducing and murdering her country’s aggressor. But whether you know the tale or not, any preconceptions are tormented by the exploration of human motivation and potentiality.

There is little positive in the unfolding of the character’s actions and yet they contain within them the very fact that we “create ourselves”. The subtitle of the play, ‘A parting from the body’, is the theme which is explored through the explosive relationship between Judith and Holofernes.

Judith comes to seduce, and Holofernes asserts that he has never been loved: “They see I shelter in their flesh. Which is not love.” Preparing for the dawn’s battle, Holofernes contemplates the “arbitrariness of death”, the possibilities of logic and the overriding appearance of chaos.

Through seduction they try to break through the “fiction” of their lives and the “suffocating pressure of sincerity” through unbridled deception. Only through deception can they see a way of reuniting thought and passion, of coming back to the body.

Our passionate being has been torn from our actions, as Holofernes describes:

“Whilst I am exhilarated by the conflict I am also possessed of the most perfect lucidity. So absolute am I in consciousness, yet also so removed from fear of death, I am at these moments probably a god. Certainly that is how the enemy perceives me. It is only when the action is over, and I am restored to the weary and sometimes damaged thing that is my body, that I sense a terrible need; not for praise, which I receive in abundance, but of that horror in another that I might have ceased, and had I ceased, she also could not have but ceased.”

Barker explores much about our relationships, not least between men and women. He shows a life force ruled by cruelty and a society dominated by violence. The cold reason of the servant that cuts through the emotional semblance of the couple is met with violence by Holofernes. The real world cannot help but cut through their dialogue both in their thoughts - which totter precariously between truth and lie - and the sounds outside.

The play shifts dramatically in its second half and the personality of Judith takes a huge leap. This is unnerving both in its consequences and the seeming lack of rationale. And yet throughout we know that Judith is not the supplicant she portrays.

The barbaric world truimphs at the end of the play, as violence kills passion, body, mind and state freedom in the final making of Judith. This is the only way Judith can suffer her blood-guilt and the only way the servant-ideologue can create the power lost within herself. As Judith becomes “stuck” in the shame of her flesh, the servant drags her back to action sundered:

“I kneel to the Judith who parts the threadbare fabric with her will ... Who are those we worship? What is it they possess? The ones we wrap in glass and queue half-fainting for a glimpse? The ones whose works are quoted and endorsed? The little red books and the little green books, Judith, who are they? Never the kind, for the kind are terrorised by grief. Get up now, Judith. No, they are the specially human who drained the act of meaning and filled it again from sources fresher ...”

As they carry out Holofernes’ head, Judith cries in ecstasy: “My body was but is no longer / Israel / Is / My / Body!”

The final scene tears at the heart of those who see not just cruelty in humanity but beauty also, who see not just suppression in ideals but liberation; for those who catch the glimpse of imagination and reason brought together, that they cannot have been permanently wrenched apart. The power of the play is the fact that it so obviously tears at Barker’s heart.

Helen Ellis