Esther in the Bible

The Book of Esther tells a terrific story. It's about a common girl with a secret heritage who wins the heart of the king and becomes his queen. It's about the clash between a lowly righteous man and an exalted wicked one. It's about an arrogant king who gains wisdom through love. But most of all, it is about salvation coming from unlikely places.

A very cool book. The Jewish holiday Purim is based around the events in Esther, and it's even got a wikipedia portal.

In many ways, Esther is a great source for a musical. It is full of archetypical characters and classic themes, and crucially for a musical, there are a lot of feasts and parties! However, there are a few issues in the original text which must be addressed in order to retell the story in a way that will be compelling on stage.

The original treatment for Xerxes Atlas presents the story as a romance, which is a good instinct and I think the right direction for the project. However, the Biblical text isn't really a love story in a way that modern audiences can easily relate to. In the book, Xerxes and Esther only see each other in very formal circumstances, and after their initial meeting we don't see them together until much later, when he has not sought out her presence in over a month and she is afraid to approach him on the penalty of death! It's not exactly a Cinderella story.

In fact, Esther and Xerxes are not really the focus of the Book of Esther. The text is more concerned with the battle between Haman and Mordecai, and how Mordecai eventually triumphs with Esther's help, despite Haman's dastardly plans. It's this victory which Purim celebrates.

However, in our play, Haman and Mordecai are secondary characters while Esther and Xeerxes are the leads. This follows a more conventional structure for a fairy tale or love story, but also provides the benefit of protagonists the audience can relate to, since Haman and Mordecai are more or less one-dimensional characters: their fortunes change throughout the story, but their attitudes and dispositions stay mostly the same throughout. Using Esther and Xerxes as our leads provides more room for character development.

The trick is working that character development into the framework of an existing story. More on that in the next post.