“Show me the place where the suffering began”— Leonard Cohen
Saul enters a dream world where the past and the present, reality and imagination cease to be clearly separable.
The Unbecoming follows Saul Levy, a young Jewish doctoral student living in London with his girlfriend, Debs, and housemate, Killian.
Saul is researching the early history of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict for his PhD, but severe insomnia has begun to blur the boundaries between his waking and dreaming lives. At night, four dead historical figures - Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, Chaim Weizmann and Leon Trotsky - appear in the flat, playing cards and gradually drawing Saul into their world. Comic companions, ancestral figures and embodiments of competing ideas about Jewish identity, Israel, nationalism and belonging, they become increasingly impossible for Saul to distinguish from reality.
As Saul’s sleep deprivation intensifies, his relationship with Debs deteriorates and his academic obsession with Israel/Palestine becomes fused with an increasingly mythic Jewish historical consciousness.
Ultimately, The Unbecoming asks whether we can escape the forces of history, identity and circumstance that shape who we are, or whether true freedom lies in the possibility of “unbecoming” the self they have created.
Saul lies asleep beside Debs, who tries to maintain her relationship with him while continuing her demanding medical career. His sleep deprivation intensifies and his academic preoccupation with Israel/Palestine becomes fused with an increasingly mythic Jewish historical consciousness.
Four historical figures take up residence as argumentative, eccentric spirits of the dead - flirtatious and oddly domestic, playing bridge, bickering and reminiscing while carrying the unfinished business of their political and private lives into Saul’s flat.
A doctoral student who cannot stop thinking. He is working on a PhD on the early history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, suffers from severe insomnia and has increasingly vivid dreams.
Saul’s girlfriend. She tries to maintain their relationship while continuing her demanding medical career, and finally draws Saul back into the real world.
Saul’s irreverent friend and housemate, who becomes simultaneously a real-world friend and, in the dream world, a soldier and emissary of Yama, the god of death.
Argumentative and eccentric, they are at once comic companions, ancestral figures and embodiments of competing ideas about Jewish identity, political purpose and belonging.
An extract from the play is available to read below.