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The Handmaid’s Tale synopsis

Music by Poul Ruders
Libretto by Paul Bentley,
based upon the novel The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
First performed: 2000

AD 2195. We are present at a world‑wide Video Conference: the Twelfth Symposium on the Republic of Gilead

Synopsis

Symposium Prologue

AD 2195. We are present at a world‑wide Video Conference: the Twelfth Symposium on the Republic of Gilead. 

In AD 2005 the Bible Belt garrotted America. Appalled by widespread pollution – physi­cal, moral and spiritual – and above all by the low birth‑rate, right‑wing fundamen­talists assassinated the President and the Congress and installed their own Bible-­based dictatorship, the Republic of Gilead. They denied women the right to work or possess property, to read or write. More: all women of child‑bearing age living in sin or second marriages were forcibly separated from their families and sent off to indoctrination centres, run by ‘Aunts’. There the women became Handmaids, due to be posted to selected childless households and ritually impregnated by the husband in the presence of his wife.

Professor Pieixoto of Cambridge Universi­ty introduces a recently discovered diary, recorded on audio cassettes by a Handmaid in hiding. He plays the first tape, and we hear her telling her tale . . .

She is torn from her husband Luke (it was his second marriage) and their five‑year‑old daughter and taken to the Red Centre.

The Red Centre Prelude

Here the classes are run by Aunt Lydia. Our Handmaid’s friend, Moira, is dragged back after a failed escape attempt. Another woman, Janine, breaks down and thinks she’s a waitperson again. Moira escapes a second time.

The other Handmaids graduate.

Act One

Three years later our Handmaid, who has not yet borne a child for Gilead, transfers to her third posting, where she is known as Offred (Of Fred), after the Commander of the house. She recognizes the Wife as Serena Joy, a Gospel singer in the time before.

Offred goes shopping paired with another Handmaid, Ofglen, and they meet Janine, now heavily pregnant.

When Offred visits the doctor he offers to impregnate her. She declines, fearfully.

Back ‘home’ handyman Nick tries to chat and the Commander approaches Offred’s bedroom – both illegal acts.

The household assembles for Forepray, and Offred undergoes her monthly ritual impregnation.

Afterwards, handyman Nick tells her the Commander wants to see her privately. Highly illegal.

Next day all the Wives and Handmaids of the district meet at the Red Centre to cele­brate the birth of Janine’s baby.

Back home Offred visits the Commander in his office at night.

Afterwards in her bedroom Offred collapses, laughing hysterically.

Act Two

Next morning Rita the servant finds Offred prone, and over‑reacts.

Offred visits the Commander again and begins to relax; but then he caresses her during the next ritual impregnation and she is terrified Serena Joy will notice.

Offred and Ofglen go prayer‑shopping and discover they are both rebels. Ofglen reveals that there is an underground move­ment. Janine, whose baby turned out to be defective and was exterminated, joins them but breaks down again. Guards take her away to be hanged.

Offred’s night visits to the Commander continue. He explains things: why Rita over‑reacted, for instance.

Child‑hungry Serena Joy secretly bribes Offred to try getting pregnant by Nick. The bribe is a photo of Offred’s missing daughter. Offred has mixed feelings.

The Commander smuggles Offred into Jezebel’s, a private brothel for top‑ranking men in Gilead. She meets Moira there.

Back home Offred and Nick make love – often.

Wives and Handmaids meet to witness the hanging of ‘criminals’. The Handmaids are allowed to destroy a ‘rapist’. Ofglen starts by kicking him unconscious to spare him pain – he was in fact part of the under­ground.

That afternoon Offred finds she has a new shopping partner and she never again meets Ofglen.

Back home Serena Joy has learned about Offred’s affair with the Commander.

As Offred, Joy, the Commander and Rita react to this, the secret police, ‘Eyes of God’, arrive to arrest Offred and take her away. 

Epilogue

AD 2195: Prof. Pieixoto tells us that the ultimate fate of Offred and the men in her life is unknown.