Tis Pity She's a Whore - channelling Tracey Emin's My Bed
25/02/2012
Tracey Emin’s My Bed must surely be the inspiration for the setting of Cheek By Jowl’s Tis Pity She's a Whore?
The company, which I’m rapidly growing quite fond of, sets John Ford’s Jacobean drama in the contemporary bedroom of tragic teenage heroine Annabella (Lydia Wilson). Her red-sheeted bed takes centre stage in front of wall bedecked with posters many with Vampire or gothic themes including those for TV series True Blood and The Vampire Diaries.
It seems a perfect canvas against which to tell a tale of incest, seduction and passion which results in - this being Jacobean drama after all - poisoning, tongue-ripping and heart-gouging.
Annabella has many suitors but, on his return to the family home her brother Giovanni (the gorgeous Jack Gordon) forgoing the advice of his priest, declares his love for his sister. The declaration is reciprocated and their relationship quickly consummated.
Giovanni urges Annabella to marry in order to better disguise their relationship and when they discover she is pregnant the matter becomes more pressing. Soranzo her chief suitor is chosen.
Meanwhile recently widowed Hippolita (Suzanne Burden) plots with Vasques (Laurence Spellman) to have Soranzo (Jack Hawkins) poisoned in revenge for the part she believed he play in her husband’s death.
The aforementioned bed becomes the location not only for acts of passion and seduction but also horrific violence as well as a stage for dances, a refuge and gathering spot to watch a fight. The room's en suite doubles as sinister punishment and torture chamber sometimes what goes on unseen is all the more horrific as it is left to the imagination.
And the acting is superb. Wilson’s Annabella is contemporary, convincing as a street-wise teen seduced by her brother yet retaining a tragic innocence.
Gordon’s, swarthy Giovanni is all passion and love, tender and violent.
I was transfixed from the opening beats of the dance routine and I think Tis Pity She’s a Whore is going to edge in five star category for the first time this year.
RS/BW 6DS
There are lots of second degree connections but my favourites are:
Jack Gordon has worked with writer/director Philip Ridley on stage in Tender Napalm and in his film Heartless and Mr W has also worked with Ridley twice in his plays Mercury Fur and Leaves of Glass.
Lydia Wilson has worked with Juliet Stevenson (Heretic) and Romolai Garai (Never Let Me Go) both of whom are in The Hour.