Heaven's blessings

Peter Barnes

As 'Heaven's Blessings' opens, Tobit has just finished digging a grave in the middle of the night. It is illegal to bury Jewish corpses in the city of Nineveh, and so he must bury them in secret, in the meantime concealing bodies in the wardrobe until he can get round to them. Things go from bad to worse when bird droppings fall into his eyes and blind him, but fortunately the angel Raphael turns up to make sure that events follow the correct Biblical course. From an apocryphal book of the Bible, Peter Barnes extracts a charming epic comedy of Tobit, his wife, their schlemiel of a son and a cantankerous guardian angel, who together set out to reclaim an outstanding IOU, overcoming many dangers which test their faith to breaking point.