The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Yale School of Drama staging ‘’Tis Pity’
Forbidden love, conspiracy, murder in the mix
NEW HAVEN >> Director Jesse Rasmussen “isn’t shy about dark material,” says a Yale School of Drama communications official. Well, let’s see: The latest play by YSD features extramarital affairs, murder plots, poisoning, stabbings, a scandalous pregnancy and (wait for it) incest.
It’s also about 385 years old, which makes it one of those oldschool tragedies that raises an eyebrow (and discomfort) in any era. John Ford’s ‘’Tis Pity She’s a Whore” will run at University Theatre on York Street six times from Tuesday through Saturday.
Rasmussen, a native Australian and third-year MFA candidate at YSD, where she directed “Knives in Hens” at Yale Cabaret and other juicy plays, said the dark nature of the play attracted her curiosity.
“How has this been such a troublesome, strange play? It was in the 1630s a controversial play and it’s remained so now,” she said. “I think incest is one of those wondrously taboo taboos that we still respond to today . ... The Jacobeans (1605-1630) were pretty wild and pretty decadent and crazy, but you’ve really got to do some crazy (stuff) to make them shrink. And I think this is Ford’s triumph in that regard.”
Set in Parma, Italy, the story surrounds Giovanni, who begins an affair with his sister Annabella despite his friar’s advice. Annabella has three other suitors, one of whom is having an affair with a married woman.
Various plot points and subplots spin out of this, leading to verbal assaults and starkly rendered violence.
Rasmussen said she’s drawn to such fare.
“I think that in this text, there is great ... terror, there’s horror and there’s beauty. In terms of necessary and electrifying ingredients, I think ... that’s my favorite cocktail.”
Rasmussen and dramaturg Davina Moss trimmed the original text to remove extraneous subplots and bring it in at a tidier running time; it also frees up actors to use their bodies more to tell the story, she said.
The play is stylized but not set in the original time period (or any particular time period although costumes are more contemporary) and producers are planning to use live video as part of the scenic design (by Ao Li). The cast includes Ben Anderson, Lauren E. Banks, Edmund Donovan, Bronte England-Nelson, Patricia Fa’asua, George Hampe, Sean Boyce Johnson and Setareki Wainiqolo.
As a YSD release puts it, “’Tis Pity She’s a Whore’ exposes the violent underbelly of a society that cannot — will not — accept (the siblings’) transgressive love.”
The play has been banned at times over the years in places and at other times has had its title changed, dropping a certain vulgar word. (The title refers to something a character utters at the end.) Critics have complained that Giovanni is too favorably portrayed (as a scholar), and Rasmussen said Ford allows the two lovers the most beautiful poetry in the play. But as you
might surmise from Rasmussen’s description of an “almost-Grecian tragedy,” most people in the play meet a fate that’s hardly “happily ever after.”
Writing post-Shakespeare, Ford’s play is a version of “Romeo and Juliet,” said Rasmussen, with more action on the page and less verbalized anguish.
“At its heart though, it’s a very radical love story, a pair of star-crossed lovers who don’t just take on their warring families or society even. They take on God; they want to create a new religion that allows them to love each other. And I think it’s a pretty brutal tragedy seeing how that ends but it’s a ... very outlaw decision, a very outlaw commitment they make to each other.”
Performances Tuesday through Saturday are at 8 p.m., with an added 2 p.m. matinee Saturday.