Edwin Morgans verse play translation of the Sumerian epic of Gilgamesh
brings an ancient story to life in a supple, vigorous idiom that moves
easily between ritual, comedy and moments of intense beauty. Here a
god-king, a great city builder, learns the timeless truth that the only
immortality lies in what will be remembered and recorded of his actions.
Gilgameshs quest takes him, and the audience, on a journey through a
world that is both mythic and familiar, inhabited by terrifying demons
and disappeared political prisoners, by gods and singing transvestites
and a Glaswegian jester and by Enkidu, the beloved child of nature who
dies of a virus in the blood, through whom Gilgamesh learns to
understand the meaning of loss.