February 20, 2008
Despite his modern-sounding name, the playwright John Ford wrote ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore’ less than a century after Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet, and these plays share a common theme of star-crossed young lovers doomed to end in tragedy. But where in Shakespeare’s play there is suicide, in ‘Tis Pity…’ there is murder; and where the swift but sweet love between Shakespeare’s couple stems from the heart, the love in Ford’s play stems from an area about a foot below this organ.
It is the treatment of women as objects that this production focuses on, and this bravely condensed version (it ran at under an hour) was determinedly 21st century in its handling of this theme. Swift scene-changes were engineered by the use of an economical set which juxtaposed period references (old-style family portraits on a flock wallpapered backdrop) with a distinctly modern handling of the sexual themes of the play. Upon closer inspection the women in the portraits were topless, there was a TV monitor used to for Trish-style ‘Incest: shock!’ TV phone-ins between each of the couple and the friar and the edge of the stage was demarcated by a floor frieze of pictures from porn magazines. There was also a bed, and to settle any doubts as to what was going on, the TV screen was used to show X-rated clips at the end of the scenes where the script alluded to ‘night time play’ – a sort of pornographic interlude between scenes. The less shockable members of the audience will have noticed that the clips all featured a female being submissive to a male, which was doubtless an allusion to the way the hapless Annabella was treated by all those who were interested in – in modern-day parlance – ripping off her knickers.
It isn’t easy playing to a house which is seated a couple of feet away, but the actors did a sterling job: Annabella was impressive and dignified, and her brother Giovanni was arresting too, with all the hotheadedness of youth exploding from his every line, but it was the manservant Vasques who stole the show (and who had the best part!), his winsome ways with people lightening the early scenes and then overshadowing the later ones when the consequences of the forbidden love are played out on the women of the household.
It is the treatment of women as objects that this production focuses on, and this bravely condensed version (it ran at under an hour) was determinedly 21st century in its handling of this theme. Swift scene-changes were engineered by the use of an economical set which juxtaposed period references (old-style family portraits on a flock wallpapered backdrop) with a distinctly modern handling of the sexual themes of the play. Upon closer inspection the women in the portraits were topless, there was a TV monitor used to for Trish-style ‘Incest: shock!’ TV phone-ins between each of the couple and the friar and the edge of the stage was demarcated by a floor frieze of pictures from porn magazines. There was also a bed, and to settle any doubts as to what was going on, the TV screen was used to show X-rated clips at the end of the scenes where the script alluded to ‘night time play’ – a sort of pornographic interlude between scenes. The less shockable members of the audience will have noticed that the clips all featured a female being submissive to a male, which was doubtless an allusion to the way the hapless Annabella was treated by all those who were interested in – in modern-day parlance – ripping off her knickers.
It isn’t easy playing to a house which is seated a couple of feet away, but the actors did a sterling job: Annabella was impressive and dignified, and her brother Giovanni was arresting too, with all the hotheadedness of youth exploding from his every line, but it was the manservant Vasques who stole the show (and who had the best part!), his winsome ways with people lightening the early scenes and then overshadowing the later ones when the consequences of the forbidden love are played out on the women of the household.