Peter Viney's Blog

‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore

by John Ford

Directed by Michael Longhurst

Sam Wanamaker’s Playhouse

Shakespeare’s Globe, London

Sunday 26th October 2014 7.30 pm

The Cheek by Jowl production (LINKED) touring earlier this year, is a hard act to follow. It was short, contemporary, fast, set in a modern teenager’s bedroom, highly choreographed. This production is a major contrast and brings out the many good bits, especially the Bergetto subplot, that were ruthlessly cut in the Cheek by Jowl production. This version was almost 50% longer. Add the magical effect of being in the kind of candlelit theatrical space in which it was originally performed in the late 1620s. In the lower gallery, the sound is perfect. The actors can go from quiet and subtle to shouting … and the shouting is reserved for anger and comes across like shouting in a small room with massive impact. The stage is tiny. At the final dance, the cast of sixteen fill it completely.

Is it Jacobean dress? In a highly stylized way, but the women have knee length or wispy semi-transparent skirts, and the men have knee length loose shorts over tights, and modern shoes. The central nod to Jacobean attire are large, disconnected ruffs for the noble characters, and some costumes are more Jacobean than others. There is a slight touch of Tenniel’s Alice in Wonderland illustrations in the ruffs and skirts.

Annabella (Fiona Button) & Giovanni (Max Bennett): Siblings in love

It’s a convoluted plot, and they’re doing all of it. Briefly Giovanni loves his sister Annabella. And Annabella loves him. This is in a lustful, physical sense. She has a parade of suitors, Grimaldi the brutal soldier, Bergetto, the upper class twit and Soranzo, the rich and powerful one. However, Annabella and Giovanni consummate their incestuous passion … here in a full nude rolling about in bed scene, which fortunately both Fiona Button (Annabella) and Max Bennett (Giovanni) have the figures for. The result is that she gets pregnant, so needs to get married. Soranzo is the lucky suitor, or alternatively, the fall guy. But Soranzo is a bit of a bastard himself. He persuaded the already-married lovely Disney Villainess (well, template for one) Hippolita to go off with him, and she had decided to do so by getting rid of her husband. The husband, Richardetto, got sent off on a dangerous journey. She thinks she’s a widow. Unknown to her, he survived and has returned disguised as a doctor, bent on revenge on Soranzo. Hippolita gets a black ruff while everyone else has white ones.

OK, so Richardetto wants to kill Soranzo for seducing his wife. Grimaldi wants to kill Bergetto and Soranzo because they’re rivals for Annabella, and anyway, Grimaldi likes killing people. On discovering that Soranzo plans to marry Annabella, Hippolita  then wants to kill Soranzo too. Phew!

So … Soranzo’s servant Vasquez (Philip Cumbus) runs all the plots. As we find out later, that’s because he’s Spanish. The Jacobeans didn’t like Spaniards. Everyone else is Italian. Vasquez pretends to help Hippolita poison Soranzo, and she promises to marry him as a reward. But then he kills her with poisoned wine which she thought destined for Soranzo. He’s a loyal chap, a hallmark of the Spanish, though apparently not of the Italians, a Machiavellian lot. This happens at a masque, which consists of Hippolita and two others doing very sexy dances in skirts which are just fringes, like floor length grass skirts.

Grimaldi sets off to kill Soranzo after Soranzo’s wedding, but in the dark mistakenly murders Bergetto who is marrying Philotis (the niece of Richardetto, posing as the doctor’s assistant).  This is done in total darkness, quite a hard thing to set up in an authentic candlelit setting, with two women snuffing candles for the previous five minutes. It works superbly. The death of Bergetto is a major tragedy and is also the first pints of gore on stage moment. It’s a tragedy because he’s everybody’s favourite character and we will have to face Act Two without him. This is an intrinsic problem with Jacobean tragedies. They keep killing off the most interesting characters.

Annabella (Fiona Button) and Soranzo (Stefano Braschi)

Soranzo discovers Annabella is pregnant, and enlists Vasquez to find out who the father is. He does so by deceiving her ‘guardian’ Putana into believing in his good will. Then he has Putana’s eyes put out. Well, why not? So they know it’s Giovanni. All is lost. After a last passionate kiss, Giovanni kills Annabella and cuts out her heart. Then he turns up at Soranzo’s party with the heart skewered on a knife. His dad, Florio, dies of shock, as one would in the circumstances. Giovanni kills Soranzo. Vasquez kills him. Don’t forget, in the couple of minutes it takes to expire in revenge tragedies, there’s always ample time for return blows and stabs. The Cardinal sentences Putana to be burned at the stake, but lets Vasquez off by banishing him to Spain (“Don’t throw me in the briar patch!” as Brer Rabbit says). With a smile that gets a laugh right after the murders, the Cardinal declares that everyone’s goods and chattels are confiscated by the church, i.e. him. He gets the last reflective line, ”Tis pity she’s a whore.’  Nobody lives happily ever after. Or at all really.

In spite of the intrigues and convolutions, the narrative is completely clear and transparent. Modern timing to bring out new sense or added sense to 17th century lines is done well and extensively. There are also several mass reactions to lines, and lots of vocalizations from listeners. It’s much, much funnier than you’d expect such a blood-spattered revenge tragedy to be. They get humour from so many lines, often unexpectedly. The major humorous role is the silly suitor Bergetto, an outstanding comedy performance by James Garnon, who also plays the red-robed cardinal without whom no revenge tragedy is complete. And the cardinal is funny too, even while hovering at the back timidly during the bloodthirsty climax. As Bergetto, he’s ably-assisted by his servant, Poggio (Dean Nolan) and they play well off each other. There is some knockabout stuff, ending up in the audience which was hilarious. Garnon’s comic timing on lines is at the highest level. Man of the Match Award.

The other comedy role is Annabella’s “guardian”or servant Putana (whose name more or less means “whore” in itself – which is why a Puttanesca pasta is the salty one with capers and anchovies). Morag Stiller as Putana has lively watchable reactive acting all the time she’s on stage, a continual comment on what’s being said with rolls of the eyes, snorts, shrugs, everything.

It feels Jacobean. There is no intrusive element. The earlier version this year dragged the play kicking and screaming into 2014. This shows us the play that John Ford wrote, and does so extremely well too. The message is that only two people, Giovanni and Annabella, act for love. Everyone else is financially or selfishly motivated. The gently erotic scene here though brings out the love aspect … in the Cheek by Jowl version, sibling messing about turns into rape.

I still wonder why the Swan at Stratford and Sam Wanamaker’s Playhouse are quite so set on “Other Elizabethan and Jacobean plays” rather than Shakespeare. There are a lot of them, it’s true. The programme essay by Will Tosh points out that “Some sixty extant Renaissance dramas address incestuous relationships in one form or another.” It set me wondering what percentage that is … how many extant Renaissance dramas are there? Clearly enough to keep The Swan and Sam Wanamaker’s Playhouse going for years.

See: REVIEW of The Cheek by Jowl production of ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore.

COMFORT & THE THEATRE

This time we were in the really great view seats, Lower Gallery facing the stage, so the dreaded shimmering candles effect in the Upper Gallery is no problem. It’s disappointing up there – it means for large parts of the play, you only see the actors from midriff down because the candles block out the top halves. In fact, seated at the top last time  (The Duchess of Malfi) we hadn’t even realized there was a pit. Didn’t see it, so missed a lot of interesting entrances and exits. We had said “Never again!” as we left, but we keep doing that. Then time passes and you remember the production and forget the discomfort.

Good job it was a brilliant production, because the benches are incredibly uncomfortable. In row B, there’s no back to lean back on, nor bar or rail to lean forward on. When there’s a bench at a table, you can after all get support from your elbows (my mum would be horrified at elbows on the table, but places with benches aren’t fussy). I’m sure a seat back was a luxury in a Jacobean tavern or home, but the modern spine is used to something in three hours – a lot of studio theatres have bench seats but manage to have a narrow bar behind them. It doesn’t take a lot of space. I guess the biggest concern was making it look authentic, but a wooden bar on metal supports wouldn’t look that odd, and anyway, I want to see the stage, not the seating areas. We noticed that in the premium seats, there were four or five empty seats in act two, and I’d guess discomfort has to be the reason. I can’t imagine anyone not being enthralled by the production. My companion has had neck problems recently and found sitting on a bench extremely painful – though of course the production was so well done that she gritted her teeth and sat through. I had to walk off my lower back pain with a brisk walk when we left too.

The Globe has lots of good, clean loos and large pleasant public areas, making intervals so much more pleasant than West End theatres.

PROGRAMME

Globe quality. First rate synopsis, all the notes you want. The benchmark for theatre programmes. The cover design echoes the 1960s Penguin Poets series. I hope it turns into a series design for the season.

JOHN FORD on this blog:

The Broken Heart, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2015

‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore – Cheek by Jowl , Nuffield, by John Ford

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

Love’s Sacrifice by John Ford, RSC