Peter Viney's Blog

‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore
John Ford

Cheek by Jowl
Directed by Declam Donnellan
Designed by Nick Ormerod

Nuffield Theatre
Southampton
Tuesday 27^th May 2014, 7.30 pm

“Directed by” is an understatement. ‘Re-imagined’ is more like it. The play is dragged from its 1626 to 1633 origin into 2014. Like so many unplanned excursions, it was a tremendous evening. We hadn’t booked it and got a 2-for-1 e-mail ticket offer for Tuesday. We finally decided to go at 5.30, booked tickets at 5.50 and left the house at 6.05 fir the 35 mile drive. Thank goodness we did. This one is unmissable. At £18 for two it was the theatrical bargain of the year too. Early 17th century “non-Shakespeare” are in the collective this year, with ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore being the third in succession we’ve seen after Arden of Faversham and The Roaring Girl. This play is also advertised for the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse Winter Season, which was partly why we wanted to see this very different take on the play.

It’s just under two hours, no interval, and felt like half that. It flew by in a tide of fast-paced movement, dancing, extreme physicality, music and acting. The play has been brought into sharp focus, major subplots eliminated. It is reduced to the central story. There’s so much business that I wonder how many original lines actually survived the précis. Actually the punchline, which is the play’s title, was one that went.

The set is Annabella’s red-painted teenage bedroom, posters on the wall. Red bed in the centre. There are two doors at the back, one from a corridor, the other an en-suite bathroom, used throughout as a brilliant substitute inner stage. The plot is probably one of those things that fuelled the Puritans desire to close the theatres in 1642. Sibling incest, cruel murder. The title is probably part of its attraction nowadays.

Annabella and Giovanni

The original plot is intrinsically explicit but here the sexuality was brought up front even more. The incestuous siblings, Annabella (Eve Ponsonby) and Giovanni (Orlando James) have a powerful and physical relationship. Annabella gets thrown around by her brother Giovanni and when she is married to Soranzo (Maximilian Seweryn) she gets chucked about even more. She was fantastic. Her revulsion on the wedding night when Soranzo starts to get intimate was tangible. It’s also clear that her dad, Florio (David Collings) is excessively touchy-feely with his daughter. Orlando James looked like a young Kenneth Branagh, and performed like him too.

Annbella (Eve Ponsonby)

The direction put so much around the speeches, and we had tons of comedy as well as action, but in the last ten minutes the tragedy was genuinely harrowing. When Giovanni took his curtain call (having ripped out his sister’s heart in the bathroom – which we could see was Psycho-level blood-spattered through the door), he looked wrung out with the emotion he’d put into the part. Like our last four productions, this had a great deal of blood, but only towards the end. If people were fainting at Titus Andronicus, I’m amazed that no one keeled over in this. We were second row and level with the action. Annabella has been impregnated by Giovanni. Soranzo’s servant, Vasquez (Will Alexander) has been assigned to discover the father of his pregnant wife’s child. To do he seduces her hilariously-acted servant Putana (Nicola Sanderson) with the aid of a male stripper. Vasques settles to watch her have sex with the stripper, who bites her tongue out, and the tongue is extremely horrifically realistic. It outdid Titus for us. But we were up close.

The subplot that was retained was Hippolita (Ruth Everett) the sexy wicked widow. That makes three outstanding female roles. Hippolita was hoping to marry Soranzo, before he was accepted as Annabella’s husband (she knew she was pregnant). Hippolita plots revenge on Soranzo, by enlisting Vasquez to poison his master. Her seduction of Vasques is great comedy and overall the theme is Disney villain … think Cruella Da Ville stalking the stage, but it is done with first-rate comedy touches. Her death scene (Vasques switches and poisons her) is one of those two minute 17^th century death speeches which are so treacherous to do, but this one worked, right up to dying mid-sentence.

Annabella- surrounded by suitors. Soranzo with flower in his mouth, Giovanni reading below bed

The concept has most of the cast on stage much of the time, as frozen tableaux watching the action, or actively watching, or all choreographed movement and dancing. Near the start there’s a terrific fistfight between Vasques, and a would-be suitor for Annabella, I think it was Grimaldi (Sam McArdle), but the suitors lost a lot of their plots so I’m not sure. Soranzo doesn’t want to get his hands dirty so has Vasquez do the fighting for him.

I thought the production right up at RSC / NT levels, and the performances the same. It is a revival, but the concept was too strong to let this production fade away. This has been touring and continues. A lot of pictures online are from previous years’ productions.

COMPARE …

Review of a conventional version of ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore (LINKED) at Sam Wanamaker’s Playhouse, October 2014.

GRATUITOUS SMOKING NOTE

Only Vasquez smokes, a couple of times very briefly. It enhanced character.

PROGRAMME

An unusual format. I always try to guess whether a programme will be £3 or £4 and this confounded me by being £3.50. Two good essays. I’d have liked thumbnails of the cast.

OTHER JOHN FORD REVIEWS ON THIS BLOG:

The Broken Heart, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2015

Love’s Sacrifice, RSC 2015

‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore – Wanamaker Playhouse, by John Ford

The Witch of Edmonton by Rowley, Dekker & Ford, RSC