By Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO, Calif.— The pity of it was that playwright Richard Greenberg never told in The Violet Hour what company manufactured the fabulous future-telling machine. Was it En-dor or was it Urim & Thummin?

From the little I've read in Hebrew Scriptures and  heard about Urim & Thummin, their prognostications tend to be of the "yes" or "no" variety. If one of the colorful stones on a breastplate begins to shine, the answer is "yes," whereas if the rays of another stone start emanating, the answer is "no." 

Questions have to be posed quite specifically to the Urim & Thummin model, one at a time, and phrased in such a way that a "yes" or "no" answer is possible.  Multiple questions, such as I sometimes ask in interviews, simply are not permitted.  Urim & Thummin models answer only the first in a series of questions, leaving you wondering.  Am I right?  Or am I wrong?  Yes.

So, I suspect quite strongly that the machine that Gidger (T. Scott Cunningham) found one day in 1919 in the office of novice book publisher John Pace Seavering (Lucas Hall) was the more loquacious En-dor variety, although this would be difficult to verify in the Old Globe Theatre's current production (through June 25) of The Violet Hour because the machine is off-stage—its prophecies interpreted by Gidger, who, I think the audience would agree, can be quite witchy.

What lends credence to my speculation is that the machine foretells the future in essays, in fact in enough pages to fill a library with books, and it doesn't shrink from telling the kind of harsh truths for which the women of En-dor have been known since the biblical times of Saul. 

Saul, in fact, was known to have changed brands, so dissatisfied was he with Urim & Thummin's propensity for answering only certain questions, and remaining silent on others.  He had a big battle coming up with the Philistines and he had neither patience nor time to contend with Urim & Thummin's quirkiness. What was going to happen?  En-dor pulled no punches.  Saul, you're going to die.  David's going to take your place.

The major difference between En-dor of old and En-dor of 1919—and perhaps this simply was a change in marketing strategy—was that in biblical days one had to seek out a fortune-teller, whereas in this fictional story set in 1919 the fabulous machine simply arrived one day, unsummoned, and began to prophesy

All of us who grew up watching  The Twilight Zone on television know how dangerous it would be to go back into the past and try to change things—suppose you inadvertently killed the man who was your great-grandfather?  Zap! You'd no longer be there!  And if you weren't there, well, obviously, there was no you to have gone back in to the past to change it.  So, therefore,  your great-grandfather couldn't really have been killed, which means you're really still alive. This great paradox was elementary to everyone's thinking about time travel.

To avoid such cosmic contradictions, fictional travelers in time as well as trekkers in space, developed a code of ethics, sometimes known as a prime directive, to visit the places, but not to change them—at least not in any significant way.  But wait a minute, how do we know what is significant, and what is not significant?  In the grand design of things, what seems to us a detail, may in fact be of unimaginable consequence.  A rock on a wagon trail is an example.  Along comes a Conestoga wagon, and one of its axels is broken as it rolls over the rock.  The driver gets down and wonders what to do now.  His wife also alights, notes that there is a small grove of trees nearby, and suggests, "Why don't we homestead here?"  So they do, and along comes another couple in another wagon.  They stop, share their news with the first couple, and are invited to dinner, and they all like each other so much, the second couple decides to homestead nearby.  

As the process repeats itself, there soon grows a settlement where once there was just an "inconsequential" rock.  And the great-granddaughter of these two pioneer families, who might never have met were it not for that rock, grows up to become the President of the United States and causes all nations to settle their differences and to love each other, thereby fulfilling all the prerequisites for being the Messiah except, I fear, of gender.

In The Violet Hour, by reading the machine's book, which was written so far in the future that everything about his life and death was stated in the past tense, publisher Seavering learns  in Act II the consequences of a decision that seemed in Act I to be of minor import. 

Believing he had only enough funds to publish one book, he had to decide in Act I should it be the book written by his best friend from college, Denis McCleary (Patch Darragh), who needed the revenue to prove himself worthy of Rosamund Plinth (Kristen Bush) of the meat-packing family, or should it be the book of the sultry Black singer Jessie Brewster (Christen Simon), who was his mistress?  

Umm & Thummin would have refused categorically to answer such a question, unless it were restated, of course.  On the other hand,  an En-dor model wouldn't hesitate to awaken a slumbering spirit, if necessary, to find the answer.

Upon reading the machine's version of what later happened to the two contending authors, as a result of his decision, Seavering decides to reconsider his actions.  It still is the present, after all, not the past.  So he can change the present, can't he?  Even if it has already been written by someone in the future as the past?  Remember the Siamese potentate (Yul Brynner) in the musical The King and I who said, "so let it be written, so let it be done"?  Seavering believed that even though it was written, it could be undone.

Was he right?  Could the future be changed?  Should he have picked the other author?  Is there more symbolism to the title The Violet Hour than simply the explanation that it's the hour at the end of the working day, when one can look back on one's accomplishments?   

Everyone knows an Umm & Thummin machine won't answer questions like those!  

But in fairness to you, I should say that it could be quite risky to assume that the En-dor clearly outclasses the Urim & Thummin.  For choosing companies like En-dor and other sorcerers, prognosticators, augurs, and the like, the Canaanites were determined to be evil idolators, and permitted to be conquered by Joshua and his band of Hebrews.

Here is how W. Gunter Plaut, Reform Judaism's distinguished commentator on the Bible, has translated Deuteronomy 18: 9-13. 

"When you enter the land, the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to imitate the abhorrent practices of those nations.  Let no one be found among you who consigns his son or daughter to the fire, or who is an augur, a soothsayer, a diviner, a sorcerer, one who casts spells, or one who consults ghosts or familiar spirits, or one who inquires of the dead. For anyone who does such things is abhorrent to the Lord, and it is because of these abhorrent things that the Lord your God is dispossessing them before you. You must be wholehearted with the Lord your God.  Those nations that you are about to dispossess, do indeed resort to soothsayers and augurs; to you, however, the Lord your God has not assigned the like."

I just thought you might like that word of caution.  John Pace Seavering, the publisher, could have used one.