The prophet never promised the tribes of Israel a king. He never gave them reason to expect a leader invested with earthly authority. And yet the people long for a ruler of flesh and blood. God is angered by this grave folly and deliberately makes the ‘wrong’ choice. He anoints Saul, a ‘twisted, troubled man’, as the first king of the Israelites. The story proceeds from a baseline of woe.

Saul is the latest drama by Botho Strauß. It is an archaic and anarchic theatre text, written in the harsh, fearsome tone of the vox atrox. In this biographical portrayal of the first king of the Israelites, Saul’s reign marks the end of the theocracy established by Gideon in the Book of Judges. Secular rule over Israel is established, only to remain dangerously fraught from then on. Not even the Witch of Endor can do anything about it…