Five stars for the Gate and Camille

A Camille O’Sullivan tour de force drives this sterling adaptation of Shakespeare’s poem. Quite simply, she is...

‘It seems the woman is always the loser, no matter what happens’

The Rape Of Lucrece Gate Theatre, until April 7 HHHHH

For once, a standing ovation was absolutely in order. Camille O’Sullivan was enthralling as both victim and rapist, as singer and actor, in a work that Shakespeare described as a pamphlet. In fact, it’s a narrative poem based on the writings of Livy and Ovid, published when he was 30, possibly written when he took time off from playwriting because the plague had shut London’s theatres.

In its original 1,855 lines of poetry, it lacks the immediate power of drama, but this adaptation and performance, condensed to a spellbinding hour-long production, concentrates on the dramatic aspects, looking into the minds of the rapist Tarquin and the ravished Lucrece.

Sections of it are sung, hauntingly at times, with raging anger at others, to music by O’Sullivan and Feargal Murray who accompanied with great sensitivity on the piano. O’Sullivan’s vocal and emotional range, and a stunning stage presence are what give the show its special power.

The tragic irony of the story is that Lucrece’s husband, the Roman soldier Collatine, had given such an impression of his wife’s beauty and chastity to other soldiers, that he inspired the brutal Tarquin’s lust.

Playing both roles, O’Sullivan manages to inhabit Tarquin’s mind through the eyes of a woman, as he goes through a selfexamination of his motives, his awareness of the evil involved, knowing it will make him infamous, but unwilling to curb his lustful desires. Her transition from Tarquin to Lucrece is achieved with the simplest symbolic costume change.

Lucrece’s desperation sends her through an agony of rage and guilt about how this had happened, how the wound is as grave to her husband as to her and what she must do to avenge her situation. It seems the woman is always the loser, no matter what happens. Her body is compared to a city being invaded.

Yet the rape and sacrificial death of Lucrece by her own hand led to the overthrow of the Tarquin monarchy and the establishment of the Roman republic. Given the timing, the performance took on a particularly pertinent edge. Tarquin even mentions sin. How’s that for an unfashionable word?

The production, directed by Elizabeth Freestone, is unfussy and sharply focused. Great use is made of light and shadow, images of innocence and evil.

I would have preferred if O’Sullivan had not been mic-ed, which led to distortion in places, but it’s a small quibble.