(2 of 2)
On a more intriguing level, the work deals with the God of the Old and New Testaments, that is, the ruling order of the universe as apart from, though sometimes ironically similar to, Britain's ruling class. The young and appealing 14th Earl of Gurney, acted with keenly perceptive skill and presence by Douglas Rain, turns out to be far battier than the 13th earl. He believes that he is God. This irritates the bejesus out of his relatives. They trick him into a marriage to sire a 15th earl, after which they plan to commit the 14th earl to an asylum. But an officious psychiatrist insists that he can cure the 14th earl by confronting him with the "true" God, a mad Scot with his eyes and his rrrrrrrr's in a fine frenzy rolling. The cure is splendid theater, and it is right out of Pirandello's Henry IV, where the madman-hero claims he is a medieval emperor and is similarly confronted with "reality."
What about reality, that eternal alter ego of drama? In the first act, dressed and behaving in hippie fashion, the 14th earl is the Jesus figure of the New Testament, the God of love and redemptive grace. He is figuratively crucified. His "cure" takes place on an actual cross.
In the second act, he becomes the God of the Old Testament, who rules by law, by the book, by the doctrine of an eye for an eye, a life for a life. To Barnes, this is the law of the gibbet, in which the hangman is the cornerstone of a sound society. This is God as a wrathful Jack the Ripper, and acting as that dominion and that power, the 14th earl disembowels the two women who love him the most. Noose and knife, a circle of doom. Barnes has seamlessly Linked his idea content—law, love, the ruling order and murder—with coruscating imagery.