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'King David, Man of Blood' (KDMOB)

Synopsis In a wager with Lucifer, Almighty God agrees to test his favourite human- by allowing David to glimpse the true nature of his very human, murderous heart, What follows is both comic and tragic, as David tries to fathom how, given his merciless acts, God can still call him his favourite. Does this mean that God is bad? And, if so, what can be done? Love, in the form of the beautiful Bethsebe quickly gives way to murder, intrigue and a shatteringly modern conclusion. King David Man of Blood (KDMOB) re-spins a classic biblical tale to devastating moral effect, fetching up on a very modern shore, where tragedy, horror, comedy and a terrible beauty co-exist. Written by Fraser Grace, and directed by Dee Evans, a cast of Mercury favourites brings to life this powerful and gripping story.

Background Lucifer makes a wager with God and sets out to test the loyalty of his favourite son, King David, Man of Blood. David's eyes are opened and for the first time he glimpses the demon, inside his own god-like being. Now David must question the nature of a God who continues to bless him, a 'war criminal' in all he does. What does this say about the God he worships?

Production History The Mercury Theatre Colchester Thu 27 May-Sat 12 June 2010. Directed by Dee Evans and designed by Sara Perks.

Cast Details

Almighty God......................................Andrew Neil

Mother God............. ................Christine Absolom

David.............................................David Tarkenter

Cusay/ Lucifer...............................Tony Casement

Nathan..........................................Ignatius Anthony

Ahithophel....................Roger Delves- Broughton

Abigail......................................Kristin Hutchinson

Joab..............................................Marshall Griffin

Bethsebe.... ..............................Clare Humphrey

Uriah................ ..............................Delroy Brown

Abishai..... ......  ...........................Tomos James

Fraser's View  When the playwright George Peele's  final script was published the world was a very different place. The year was 1599 and Elizabeth I was in the final decade of her reign. William Shakespeare had just had a hit with a play called Julius Caesar and Peele's play The Love of King David and the Fair Bethsebe was set to create quite a stir.

Not only is the play almost unique in Elizabethan theatre in being based entirely on biblical material, but Peele had also taken a considerable political risk. The tale of how a monarch falls for a beautiful subject and then when the liaison is in danger of discovery-coolly arranges the death of that subject's spouse, must have appeared indelicate at least. It was taken by some to be a satire on the Queen's earlier relationship with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whose wife of the time had met an untimely end.

Given the sexual politics of the day, it's fair to assume that far fewer people were perturbed by Peele's portrayal of Bethsebe as a minor character in the tale. She appears in his account as a virtuous, practically voiceless bit-player. Peele wants us to know that this is a story about a truly great ruler who may have taken a wrong turn, but is soon turned back to the path of righteousness. Furthermore, Peele's inability to present another of the major characters, God himself onstage at all, (such a thing would have been viewed as clearly blasphemous), also allows the author to skip over some of the more troubling aspects of the tale. For when God finally calls David to task for his actions, it is not upon the guilty party that he pours his judgement, but on a child.

Of course in 1599, the King James Bible was still twelve years from publication, so it's possible that fewer people still would realize that the noble-yet-flawed David of Peele's play is a far cry from the man we can meet for ourselves in the Old Testament. This man was known in his mature years not as a harp-plucking poet, much less the boy who slew the giant Goliath with a pebble, but as the Man of Blood, a ruler so savage in slaughtering those outside his tribe that men trembled at his name.

It is this murderous man, this wronged but resourceful woman, and this vengeful God (and his wife) that modern times allow to appear in our play- and the questions their actions provoke are questions that go to the heart of modern concerns. When is it justified to kill? Is war a licence to murder within, or without, limit? Is it better to have a god as our arbiter of right and wrong, or a human being?

One thing Peele certainly did accomplish-an achievement that reminds us of his credentials as a playwright (an earlier play is believed by some to have provided the first act of Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus)- occurs in the field of dramatic strategy. Peele spotted that this complex story of private and political plots is held together by messages, and by those nameless messengers who must  deliver them. In a stroke of theatrical economy bordering on genius, Peele fuses all these messengers into one man, whom he calls-for reasons best known to himself-Cusay. KDMOB, in this respect at least, follows suit and this, more than anything makes space for our play to become what it is- a terrible, diabolical comedy.

In one final and important respect, these two Davids- separated by more than four hundred years-differ; in1599, when Peele's play was first published, the author had been safely dead for three years. It is to the great credit of the Mercury Theatre- and Dee Evans it's Artistic Director- that they had the courage and enthusiasm, not only to commission a new play for their mainstage from a living writer, but to stage it while this is still-at the time of writing-the case. For any playwright this is an immense privilege.

Enjoy!