The Scapegoat - A play in progress

One of several versions

On Sunday afternoon I went along to a play reading at the Jewish Museum, Camden.  The play, The Scapegoat, is play in the making.  Basically, the writing process is not yet finalised but this was it's first full reading in front of a small audience.  The play is set around the painting by William Holman Hunt of The Scapegoat which was painted in the Holy Land.  The story of the scapegoat goes back to Old Testament times when two goats were chosen for the Festival of the Day of Attonement - one for ritual slaughter and the other had a ribbon or cloth of red tied to it and it was then driven out into the dessert carrying the sins of the whole community upon it.

The play is set in London and Israel of today as well as Victorian Britain and the Holy Land in the late 1800's.  The characters were two Jewish sisters at odds with one another, a American lodger (the daughter of a former friend) all set in today's time and Holman Hunt, Edward Lear, Annie Miller (Hunt's model) and Hunt's two wives Fanny and Edith (sisters!).  The goat also had a part!

At the start I wondered where the play was going - there were quick scene changes and it didn't fit together somehow.  But as it progressed it improved.  There was much about Hunt's 'ideal' for the Holy Land in contrast to what there actually is now, about conflict and the two sisters do not see eye to eye over it. The lodger 'finds herself' and comes back to her religion.

Afterwards there was a questions and answers session which helped to flesh out certain things.  But the play does need a bit of working on.  Of course there was no scenery and in the actual play there will be music.  At the back of the room were some photos of some of Holman Hunt's paintings, including The Scapegoat as well as picture of the house Hunt had built in Jerusalem in 1876.  Hunt, of all the Pre-Raphaelite painters, stuck to his principals in style and didn't waver as did Rossetti and Millais.  He was also very religious and was wracked with guilt all his life over something.  Mixing with Rossetti and his circle who bedded their models and slept with the wives of friends must have been hard.  He was certainly tempted but he suffered for it!  Hunt's first wife died in childbirth and he then later married the youngest sister who told Hunt that she fell in love with him when she was 14!  I think there was a lot of guilt there too!  Hunt was very good looking - he seemed to keep his looks as he got older and he was a wonderful painter.

It was interesting to see a 'work in progress'.  I hope it eventually gets on to the stage.  The ticket enabled entry to the museum but unfortunately there wasn't the time.  Another visit is called for sometime!