Bathsheba and the Books, Handmade Ivy Stage and Screen, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Bathsheba and the Books (Stage 1, Westbury Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Bathsheba and the Books is a rare example of serious Old Testament scholarship, a sadly neglected field at the Fringe. JUST KIDDING.

It’s more like an SNL sketch or a Catskills skit night contribution than a play. The amusing premise is that the Old Testament’s sexpot Bathsheba, King Solomon’s mom, has left her va-va-voom days behind, she says. The new image she’s cultivating is Literary Intellectual (“leave me alone, I have reading to do”). And her plague (of locusts) project, so speak, has been putting together a compilation volume she’s set to call the Bible. Why that title? “Lord of the Rings was taken.” She’s even enlisted an increasingly harried editor (Chris Fassbender), who needs the work.

Who knew Bathsheba (Aimée Beaudoin) was the one? Anyhow, the Old Testament remains a largely unfurrowed field when it comes to comedy — OK, except for those Adam and Eve jokes, and Moses at the Red Sea-side routines, and those inadvertent occasions when the heaping on of ‘begats’ tends to make the crowd hysterical. But let’s not quibble: David Ellis Heyman’s claim to that territory is largely unchallenged in Canadian theatre.

Anyhow, the whole process of selecting the books for the world’s first Bible is on speed dial because Bathsheba’s son King Solomon, one of those spoiled rich kids with anger management issues (Jake Tkaczyk) has run out of money for his vanity project, The Temple of Solomon. So he’s grabbed hold of the project, and Bathsheba has 15 minutes to choose the books for her best-seller. Deadlines deadlines.

The self-appointed project bean-counter Hiram (played by Jeff Halaby like a wired Borscht Belt comic) is on the case, putting in his two shekels-worth about which books to pick, which to toss, which to save for the sequel.

Davina Stewart’s cast is a quartet of skilled comic actors. And they, along with director Stewart’s choices, make for an amiable, mildly amusing 45 minutes.