Words by Jimmy Dougan / Production images supplied by Lying Lips Theatre Company – pic of The Crescent Theatre from Google Maps
Sometimes you have to look at the past to look at the present – and the best way to do this is to make the past feel like the present, which is something director Nathalie Bazán has done with this new production of John Ford’s ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore for Lying Lips Theatre Company.
Adapting Ford’s play, first performed in the 1600’s, Bazán has taken inspiration from the films of Quentin Tarantino, who has more in common with the Jacobean playwright than you’d think: the characters are sometimes deviant, mostly psychopathic, and often die in spectacularly gruesome ways. And both – as this production proves – wrote wonderful parts for women.
It’s an approach which confuses as much as it enlightens; the world surrounding the play is ill-defined, the violence never quite as orgiastic as it promises to be. But it’s full of visceral performances from a fiercely committed cast, who posture and flex before us like deranged supermodels. And when Bazán takes the brakes off it has a freewheeling intensity which drags us to the core of this deeply disturbing drama.
The genius of Ford’s play is that it doesn’t pass judgement on the incestuous love at its heart and trusts the audience to form their own opinions: siblings Giovanni (Chris Cook) and Annabella (Mia Athena Joyce) are unmistakably in love.
Bazán follows suit and directs their early scenes warmly, whilst Cook and Joyce play the strange awkwardness of their predicament beautifully. Cook presents Giovanni as a man so fuelled with longing that he’d warp the teachings of the Church to prove his point, whereas Joyce delivers Annabella as a headstrong young woman simply following her heart. It’s them against the world.
Wonderful too is the subplot concerning the wounded Hippolita (Nikita Sharma), who let her husband die so she could elope with Soranzo (Ross Gilby) only for him to – you guessed it – ditch her to pursue Annabella.
Where other productions treat Hippolita as a comic schemer, Sharma imbues her with a sense of genuine pride, making her more a wounded lioness. And while some in the cast have a tendency to rush their lines, Sharma slows the tempo down so that we hang off her every word. When her character spars with Soranzo (Ross Gilby) sparks genuinely fly.
Gibly plays Soranzo as the sort of coked-up sleaze you’d see roaming Broad Street on a Saturday night, at one point wanking furiously to an image of Annabella. And the sharp contrast adds weight to the narrative; Giovanni might be her brother, but at least he sees her as a person.
Where the production falters is in its commitment to realism, which grounds the performance in reality but neuters the strangeness of Ford’s text. Where, exactly, are we supposed to be?
Tarantino is a master at placing his characters in richly rendered period settings: here we see a brief video-backdrop of what looks like Tokyo’s Shibuya neighbourhood, but the costumes make no attempt to evoke any time or place. And while the violence in Tarantino’s films post-Inglourious Basterds has grown increasingly hysterical, pornographic even, here the violence feels too restrained.
But when I think about this production, I don’t think about the fake knives or blood packs or pretend cocaine snorting. I think about the performances. Rare in fringe-theatre is an ensemble so attuned with each other. They speak the text quickly – no easy feat – which lends the latter half of the evening a relentless intensity.
Bazán manages to make their characters feel like real people, with ambitions and desires and lusts. It has a dreadful, all-encompassing misery. Hell is real, and Bazan puts us in it. Next time, she should let herself take all the credit.
For more on Nathalie Bazán and Lying Lips Theatre Company visit www.nathaliebazan.wixsite.com/nathalie-bazan/lying-lips-theatre-company
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For more from The Crescent Theatre, including full programme details and links to online ticket sales, visit https://www.crescent-theatre.co.uk/