'Pity' all modernizations aren't this good

Anyone who saw the 1996 film adaptation of Romeo and Juliet--oops, I mean, William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet--can be forgiven for entering the Silliman Dramatic Attic, where a modernized retelling of John Ford's seventeenth-century drama 'Tis Pity She's a Whore is playing this weekend, with at least a twinge of skepticism. That cinematic day-glo disaster, which proved that the best-laid plans of mice and MTV can reduce even the greatest texts to the level of Calvin Klein commercials and Smashing Pumpkins videos, was so laughably bad that it casts a dubious shadow on any Jacobean updates that have followed it.

'Tis Pity, however, was stunningly modern for its time, with its homoerotic underpinnings and fearless tackling of the incest taboo. It thus almost begs contemporary reconstruction. One's fears about the modernizing mechanics of this production are assauged from the first moment of the proceedings, despite the PJ Harvey plaint wailing in the background: the play is a triumph of seamless direction and vibrant acting.

Annabella (Alexis Soloski, BR '98) and Giovanni (Gideon Banner, BR '99) are just two cute kids in love and lust. Problem is, they're brother and sister, and Annabella, sought by many a suitor, is due to marry. Her Armani-suited, pearl-bestranded mother, Florio (Megan Campisi, DC '99), omnipresent martini in hand (imagine if Stockard Channing in Six Degrees of Separation had a bit more attachment to the sauce, and you've got Florio), girds the lineup, which includes the spastic Bergetto (Brian Mullin, DC '01) and the suave Soranzo (Jacob Grigolia-Rosenbaum, JE '00). Soranzo wins out, much to the obvious rage of Giovanni and the subtler, more complicated ire of Vasques (Chipo Chung, TC '00), Soranzo's despicably loyal servant. The chain of betrayals, reprisals, and tragedies that follow is elegantly invoked in the play's opening scene, which looks like a cocktail party in the lobby of Hell, and finds Annabella and Giovanni in a strange pantomine: Annabella hands Giovanni a knife, and they circle each other with equal wariness and longing.

It's an intriguing, ambiguous, but not oblique opening to a production that draws in its viewer subtly, due in considerable part to Claire Lundberg's, TC '98, unobtrusive blocking. Lundberg, like her actors, has an excellent sense of space, an especially important asset within the tight confines of the Dramatic Attic; her characters move in real time. The wonderful mix of erotic tension, real joy, and inevitable doom elicited in the scene when Annabella finally yields to Giovanni's coaxing is especially masterful. But the play's subtlety is a rather vampish one: the actors' body language is innately sexual, from Friar Bonaventura's (Ben Vershbow, BR '01), um, tender caresses and embraces of Giovanni; to the movements of Vasques and Hippolita (Stacie Lents, SY '00), both of whom don't walk so much as sashay, hips front and center; to even the drooling idiot Bergetto, who, writhing on the ground, seems to embody the insatiable id by which so many of the other characters seem so driven.

'Tis Pity is itself driven, ultimately, by its actors, each and every one of whom can be praised. As Giovanni, Banner nearly always wears a vague half-smile, no matter what atrocities are occurring around him (or he himself has performed). His odd grin is a measure of the fatalism to which he seems resigned from the moment he falls in love with his sister. Vershbow's friar seems to recognize Giovanni's fatalist romanticism, and the combination of moral outrage and helpless pity that his expressions and gestures evoke is poignant (his character, in less capable hands, easily could have devolved into a hapless finger-wagger). Michael Bell, TD '98, as Richardetto displays stick-pin precision timing in his portrayal of the consummate charming sleazeball; the blinding-white suit he sports doesn't hurt either (costumes are expertly handled by Terah Maher, BR '99, and Chandra Speeth, TC '98).

Of the cast, it is Soloski, as Annabella, who has the best grasp on Ford's language and rhythms. She never speechifies: phrases like "Alas, good man" or "Sir, what's your will with me" sound as natural as anything overheard on the street or in the dining hall. Soloski has a lovely moment early in the play when Annabella is putting on a locket, a gift from a suitor; as Giovanni enters, her upraised arms just miss concealing her small, utterly lovestruck smile.

Ford is only setting us up for the play's big fall--this is revenge tragedy, mind you. Disaster arrives, at least in part, in the form of Vasques. In this role, Chung walks off with the play, both figuratively and literally. Vasques's power lies in her vicious sexuality, which no one seems capable of resisting; from the moment Chung sets her black-booted heel on the stage, one is held in thrall to this peerless Castrating Bitch. She's a fitting synechdoche for a uniformly strong production. It's a bloody nasty affair, and one can't help but submit to it.

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