Word: sauls
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Polish up on your Bibles if you're in the mood for an interesting and wellacted new play, Beginner's Luck, now playing at Reality Theatre in Boston, tonight through Saturday at 8. The play, based on the Biblical tale of power rivalry between King Saul and the shepherd boy David (of Goliath fame), suffers from occasional cloying sweetness and the overuse of improvisational techniques, such as sing-alongs and audience participation, but overall it is moving and provocative...
...SPITE OF THESE structural weaknesses, the play contains many very moving and well-acted moments. The growing relationship between David and Saul that mixes rivalry with reluctant affection is subtly written and strikingly portrayed by Baxstresser and McDonough. Baxstresser's gender does not impede her portrayal of David; her slim, boyish looks overcome her feminine voice. Deceptively earnest and naive at first, Baxstresser waxes tense and ruthless. McDonough as Saul conveys the innocence and incompetence which plauge Saul very well, although at times he hammers in Saul's stupidity with overplayed grimaces and heavy-handed humor. Nevertheless, the scene where...
McDonough's Saul and Weinstein's Samuel also play off each other very well. When Samuel reprimands Saul, the tension between the two suggests a father-son confrontation. In a particularly gripping scene, Samuel, laughing maniacally, hacks to pieces a king captured in battle who Saul had refused to execute. In general, Weinstein does well with a poorly-written part. Samuel is unbelievably mystical, with his prophecies and his yoga-like formulas for steeling oneself to face death or danger...
...scenes between Ruth and Saul are unquestionably the most realistic and the most engrossing in the play. Barnes's Ruth shines in both her dimensions--suitably mysterious in her witchcraft, wise and shrewishly loving in her human relations. Whenever he faces serious trouble, Saul seeks out his mistress Ruth, who tartly reprimands him for selfishly taking and not giving, but helps him nevertheless. Ruth is the only character in the play who really understands Saul's limitations, and how unsuited he is for his role of king...
RATHER THAN A PLAY primarily about power, this play focuses more on relationships--and the interweaving of power, love and betrayal. Lipsky's philosophizing at the play's end about Israel's decline from Moses's cooperative tribal government to the power politics infecting David and Saul falls flat, perhaps owing to the narrator's underlining of the self-evident. Better to stick to what he does best--implying the moral of the play through well-written character confrontations--and leave Story Theater for fairy tales...