Public reading at Domino Theatre, Kingston, March 2005. A theatre company is workshopping the apocryphal story of Judith, the Israelite woman who uses her beauty to gain admittance to the tent of the invading Babylonian general, Holofernes, and kill him. The actors, however, turn out to be reincarnations of the ancient characters: Judith of Judith, Harold (the workshop director) of Holofernes, and Judith’s pedantic husband Meredith (the playwright) of her former husband, Menasseh. Judith and Harold are trying to discover if the biblical story is true by improvising, while Meredith wants the play performed his way. In the reinterpreted version, Judith turns out to be desperately and sexily in love with Holofernes, going to him out of desire but aware that she must forever remain ritually pure. Both know they are playing out a part, from which they cannot escape because of the expectations of the more conventional members of their own societies. The scene where Judith is supposed to kill Holofernes turns out differently from the traditional story. Other characters are a conceited pretender to Judith's hand, Achior; a pompous politician, Uzziah (both of whom also play soldiers in Holofernes' army); Holofernes' sadly comic eunuch, Bagoas; and Judith’s slave woman, who turns out to be the key to the whole story. The play is structured as a play within a play. It does not follow a chronological sequence, so that, although events after Holofernes' death are included, the moment of climax (in both senses) comes just before the end. Judith's moment of triumph according to the Bible, when she is acclaimed by all, is in fact the moment of her greatest tragedy.