To start with, let’s get our John Fords straight. There is the pioneering movie director, whose career spanned the transition from silent movies to some of John Wayne’s iconic roles. (My wife and I got to see one of his silent films that had been presumed lost, but turned up in New Zealand.)
And then there is John Ford, the 17th Century playwright and poet. This play is by the latter.
Although he wrote quite a number of plays, he is best known for this one, Tis Pity She’s a Whore.
The title will, unfortunately, accurately capture the misogyny in the play - although how much is Ford himself versus that of his unpleasant characters is debatable. At least as presented here, a good part of the horror of the narrative is the way the women are objectified, and made to serve as the outlets for male violence and frustration.
The play was written about 30 years after Romeo and Juliet, and director Cody Ganger notes that Ford seems to have drawn some influence from it. But he added a LOT more blood, and made the story not about feuding families, but about incest.
Young Annabella (Justine Luevano) and her brother Giovanni (Jesse Magdaleno) fall in love, and enter a sexual relationship which eventually leads to her pregnancy. Partly complicit in this is Puttana (Ellie Sivesind), Annabella’s nurse and guardian.
Meanwhile, there are a pair of suitors for Annabella’s hand. There is the boorish soldier, Grimaldi (Dusty Steele), who doesn’t have much of a shot. And then there is Lord Soranzo (TJ Sandoval), who looks pretty good on paper, but who has a past that is….complicated.
Soranzo has recently exited a relationship he has been having with a married woman, Hippolita (Cristina Goyeneche.) Well, she used to be a married woman, but she is presumed widowed after she convinced her husband, Richardetto (John Spitzer), to go on a dangerous voyage from which he is missing and presumed dead.
Except that he isn’t. He has come back, working as a physician, and looking for revenge.
Here is where this production deviates a bit from the original source. In the original, there are three suitors, the third of which gives up fairly early, and pursues the doctor’s niece instead. This allows the scene in which Grimaldi tries to kill Soranzo result in mistaken identity and the death of the third suitor, instead of a fight gone wrong that ends in Grimaldi’s death. Unfortunately, omitting this scene and the two extra characters did make for a lack of clarity - why didn’t Soranzo die of the poisoned knife? This is a minor quibble, but I did notice that something was omitted.
Okay, back to the plot. When Annabella realizes she is pregnant, she decides to agree to marry Soranzo, to save her honor.
Enter Soranzo’s nefarious servant, Vasquez (Kevin Ganger.) He double and triple deals with the characters, taking whatever tack gets him the most at a particular time, and in the end betraying pretty much everyone.
Vasquez first pretends to befriend Hippolita and agrees to help her murder Soranzo. After sleeping with her, of course. But he switches glasses, and Hippolita dies instead. He realizes early that Annabella is pregnant, but assumes his master got a little ahead of things - he uses this to inflame the fury of Grimaldi.
He then gets Puttana to reveal the truth, and assists Soranzo in plotting to murder Giovanni.
And then things go pretty crazy. Let’s just say that in the end, nearly everyone is dead. Friar Bonaventura (Scott Deaton) has the good sense to see the impending disaster and get the hell out of there. Richardetto, having seen his wife die in front of him and Grimaldi fail, abandons his plans for revenge against Soranzo, and thus avoids dying. A few minor characters aren’t worth killing off. And Puttana appears to have been blinded but not killed.
And when I say “everyone dies,” I mean violently and with a lot of fake blood. After fights that involve people slammed against walls, bashed in the head, and generally bloodied. It’s a mess.
At the end, there is even a heart plucked out and paraded around. So perhaps a warning for violence there.
There is also some simulated sex, although no nudity, and not really graphic at all. Cody Ganger is a trained intimacy coach, and the careful choreographing of both the sex scenes and the violent fight scenes show great care in making sure the actors were neither injured nor put in uncomfortable situations.
When I mentioned the misogyny, I was particularly thinking of the way that every time a man became upset, uncomfortable, threatened, he seemed to go straight to “let me hit or kill a woman.” No surprise that a 17th Century play set in ancient Italy would have patriarchal norms and a sexual double standard. And no surprise that honor culture is on full display. It is still uncomfortable.
Of course, it is also an unpleasant reminder that honor killings aren’t exactly limited to “those people” in the Middle East - Ford thought having one in his very English play only 400 years ago was perfectly normal.
Again, though, the question as to what Ford himself thought of all this is another matter. He clearly builds up plenty of sympathy for Hippolita, even though she has attempted to murder her husband. She is still a spurned woman, now left desolate.
Likewise, it is impossible not to feel bad for Annabella. Her brother is older, and the initial aggressor, but she is left to pay the price no matter what. She cannot be with Giovanni, obviously. But she does not love Soranzo at all, and, after he guesses her pregnancy, he turns vicious and cruel….just like he is to Hippolita. For all his suavity, he is really shitty person when it comes to his treatment of women. Hump and dump.
There really isn’t much of anyone to like in this play. Puttana is as unhelpful as Juliet’s nurse, and too clueless to avoid betraying her ward. Father Buenaventura is notable mostly for his failure to make any positive difference, and for his description of the horrors of hell - particularly for females who have sex out of wedlock. This passage drew a lot of laughs because of its “unintentional comedy factor.” Whether Ford intended it seriously (probably) it feels now like a parody of every bad hellfire and brimstone sermon we ex-fundies ever heard. You know, the ones with a screed against sex that seems to conceal a bit too much fascination with the subject.
Even the father, Florio (Randy Messick), is too clueless to actually listen to either of his children. Although he does get a chance to cut his own throat dramatically - which was done with all the delicious melodrama that a retired drama professor can muster. (We all love Randy, who did so much for theater at Bakersfield College in the many decades he taught there. It is great to see him still on stage, even in minor roles.)
Thus, Tis Pity She’s a Whore is in the vein of Titus Andronicus. Everything is horrible, everyone is horrible, everything ends badly, and they all deserve it. Or something like that.
A play like this can only work if the actors are able to sell it. And in this production, they sure did. Locals will recognize quite a number of local drama teachers in the cast, and other veterans of the local stage. Relative youngsters Magaleno and Luevano in the lead roles had solid sexual chemistry, and conjured tears and emotions quite convincingly. Ganger was as delicious as usual in the villain role - he seems to relish them along with the goofball characters. Sandoval embodied the utter lack of self-regulation of his character, swinging between tender wooing and uncontained fury as the play progressed. Goyeneche, Sivesind, and Spitzer tend to be on my list of reliably good veterans, and they were great here too. And, a mention of Deaton, Gary Enns, and Steele for fine work in smaller parts.
Stars Playhouse is in a small industrial space. Since The Empty Space moved to larger digs, I think the Playhouse is now the smallest venue here in town, and they have to make do with very little. That means creativity, and the sets and staging made the most of the resources. To a significant degree, this was done with lighting and movement. The back of the stage area was usually dark, and served to house the various props and furniture when not in use - and also for the sex scene and the heart-ripping scene. These were both at a distance, and with softer lighting. I thought it was well thought out and effective.
The fight choreography was quite detailed. These were not improvised fights, but set to a music of their own, so to speak. The spring-loaded stage knives, the fake blood, and the sleight of hand needed to fake smashing blows convincingly are not to be taken lightly. Several of the moves looked like bad technique would have ended in real concussions. So props to Goyeneche and Steele for their work as fight choreographers.
This is a dark play, a horror play, but was well done. The Playhouse has been tackling some more difficult works the last few years, which has been fun. In general, since the pandemic, I think local theater has been eager to branch out and do more challenging plays. The local theater crowd appears to be responding, too, as there have been a lot of sold out dates.
Bakersfield has a vibrant theater scene, which is one of the best things about this town. Rather than complaining about having nothing to do on a Friday night, come on out to one of our local stages and see what is going on.
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