Sex, violence and extreme passions in scintillating staging of John Ford's succès de scandale
Incest, morality, religion and corruption – ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore is still as shocking and controversial as it was almost 400 years ago. Following huge successes in London, New York and Sydney, Cheek by Jowl take John Ford’s 17th century tragedy to Amsterdam. Directors Declan Donellan and Nick Ormerod created a scintillating modern staging full of sex, violence and extreme passions. Against the backdrop of a society which values power and money above all else, the forbidden love between the rebel teenage girl and her brother seems to be the only love which is true and pure. When the couple ignore all warnings and succumb to their passion, they embark on a fateful path towards hell and damnation.
dates
Sun June 15 2014 10:30 PM
Mon June 16 2014 10:30 PM
information
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English
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Duration of performance unknown (zonder pauze)
Cheek by Jowl's ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore is a modern adaptation of the play of the same title by the 17th century playwright John Ford. Written around 1630, it has until this day been one of the most controversial pieces in English stage literature. Not only because the play centres on the incestuous relationship between two siblings, but mainly because Ford's sympathy is with his main protagonists and he fails to condemn their incestuous relationship. Ford portrays Giovanni (the brother) and Annabella (the sister) as noble and virtuous people with a good heart and puts their innocent love against the hypocrisy of society and the church.
The central plot revolves around Annabella, the daughter of Florio of Parma, and her brother Giovanni. Annabella is a delectably nubile young woman, who is attracting the attention of many suitors. Her father favours the rich Soranzo, not knowing that all these men do not interest her in the slightest, as her heart belongs to her brother Giovanni, who has turned his erotic worship of her into a religion. The two lovers pledge they will forever stay true to each other, but their secret, incestuous relationship is soon rendered impossible when it appears that Annabella is pregnant.
Realising that she has acted wrongly, Annabella decides she cannot carry on with Giovanni. She takes her father's advice and agrees to marry Soranzo. However, on the wedding day, Soranzo discovers that Annabella is pregnant. When he finds out who the father is, he concocts a plan to take revenge and invites Giovanni to his birthday party. Despite all warnings, Giovanni accepts, but before he joins the party, he visits Annabella in her room. Unlike Annabella he is not able to sacrifice his love for her, and he kills her. Holding aloft her heart on his dagger, he makes his entry at Soranzo's birthday party.
Director Declan Donnellan has cut out big chunks in his staging of Ford's original text, omitting many of the subplots, instead zooming in on the perspective of Annabella, portraying her as a contemporary, 21st century teenage rebel. The whole of the play is set in her bedroom, designed by Nick Ormerod as a crimson lair dominated by a kingsize bed with bed linen the colour of blood and walls lined with posters of the TV-series True Blood and medieval icons of the Holy Virgin. Ormerods design in combination with Nick Powell's pumping soundrack evokes a cocooned world in which sex, love and religion are intricately interwoven and imagination and taboo desire have been allowed to run a feverish riot. Annabella comes across as a young woman who might seem streetwise, but is only just coming into her sexuality, confused by the feelings it stirs in her and the men around her. Living in a world in which status, money and power seem to be regarded as the only things of true importance, it's no surprise she succumbs to her brother's advances and the pure and honest love he can offer her. Naively, in a way, but also rather recklessly, yielding to her obsessive brother, she embarks on a fateful path towards her own doom. So the pity isn't that she's a whore, as a man of the cloth callously concludes John Ford's original play; it’s that she hasn’t been given the time and space to figure out who she is. Thereby highlighting an issue which puts this interpretation by Cheek by Jowl firmly in our own, modern times.
