Tag: Duke on 42nd Street

… a great theatrical experience …

Amelia Pedlow as Annabella and Matthew Amendt as Giovanni. Photo Richard Termine

‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore is a brilliant and uncompromising play about forbidden sexual love. Probably first performed between 1629 and 1633 and not often since, it’s often seemed too hot to handle — one can see why. Taking conflict in romantic love to the extreme, ‘Tis Pity studies through the unfolding of drama what happens if the lovers are subjected to an ultimate obstacle – incest.

Giovanni, an attractive young man in all ways, thoughtful, a reader, has recently returned home to Parma from the University in Bologna and is wildly in love with his sister, Annabella, who returns his passion. Nude and ecstatic, they secretly consummate their forbidden love in a bed scene that recalls Romeo and Juliet’s night together after their surreptitious marriage – but while it’s society that keeps the lovers apart in Romeo and Juliet, in ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, it’s biology. Somehow that seems like a kind of digging deeper.

Since the love affair is secret, attractive and well-to-do Annabella is besieged by other suitors. One, Grimaldi is a pretentious soldier, and Bergetto is a none-too-bright fop – his scenes are hilarious, but he’s clearly not a true contender. More in play is a wealthy nobleman, the intelligent and determined Soranzo who, though he appears eligible, has abandoned his previous lover, Hippolita.

Kellly Curran as Hippolita and Clifton Duncan as Lors Soranzo. Photo Richard Termine

Kelly Curran as Hippolita and Clifton Duncan as Lord Soranzo. Photo Richard Termine

Hippolita, enraged by Soranzo’s deceit, and the death of her husband that she believes followed from it, plots to kill Soranzo in revenge. Her husband, though, is alive and on the scene in disguise, is also looking for revenge against Soranzo and enlists Grimaldi to murder him. Grimaldi, though, kills innocent Bergetto in error and the local sanctimonious Cardinal, reminding us of the hypocrisy English Protestants of the time attributed to the Catholic church, banishes Grimaldi to Rome in punishment.

I wouldn’t touch that drink if I were you. L-R Derel Smith, Christopher Innvar, Clifton Duncan, Amelia Pedlow, Franchelle Stewart Dorn. Photo Richard Termine

Annabella, by now pregnant by her brother and with two of her three suitors gone, in desperation marries the remaining suitor, Soranzo. His love turns murderous when he discovers she’s pregnant by another man. Extracting the name of her lover from Annabella’s tutoress (with dire consequences for the poor woman), he readies himself to kill Giovanni, but not before Giovanni has, well … Othello may come to mind. But Ford doesn’t leave off with I kiss thee and I kill thee. Some may find the brutality and gore that marks the ending sensationalism: I thought it was expressive.

Matthew Amendt is outstanding as Giovanni, an intellectual young man totally overwhelmed by his passion – mostly Romeo but we see the Hamlet in him. He’s inspiring as he speaks the powerfully lyrical poetry of love, and persuasive in rage, in all ways a vigorous, commanding stage presence.

Amelia Pedlow is a fine Annabella who transforms from girl to woman before our eyes, though it doesn’t do her any good. Among the supporting characters in this superbly acted play, I enjoyed particularly the full characterization Ryan Garbayo brings to the role of Bergetto – foppish, but he really falls in love. Derek Smith is fascinating as Vasquez, Soranzo’s realistic and manipulative servant: he’d thought he’d seen everything – until the events of ‘Tis Pity. The same goes for the audience.

The black and white geometry of David M. Barber’s set is a stunning backdrop for the emotional intensity – the vibrant color – of the play. This set is a vivid parable of the raw war between intellect and passion of ‘Tis Pity. The haunting music, jarring but appealing, is composed by Adam Wernick.

The many Shakespearian echoes are a gauge powerful awareness of Shakespeare’s plays in the world of theater fifteen or so years after his death but ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore is a deeply original work, a moving drama and a profound psychological exploration the isolating madness of romantic love. Without absolving Giovanni and Annabella, ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore thrusts them into a world of shallow moralistic judgments that seem trivial and irrelevant in light of their profound emotional experience.

And what about that title? To understand the point, you have to hear the great last lines.

But that’s fine — nobody could leave ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore early!

‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, a Red Bull Theater production, plays at the Duke On 42nd Street on Manhattan’s West Side through May 16th, 2015.

Review | Orpheus X | Written and Composed by Rinde Eckert | Directed by Robert Woodruff | With Rinde Eckert, Suzan Hanson and John Kelly | Video by Denise Marika | Duke on 42nd Street | Theater for a New Audience

By Yvonne Korshak

On December 6, 2009

In Off-Broadway Theater

… so that’s what it’s like down in Hades …

I thought Rinde Eckert’s two-person play, And God Created the Great Whales, was one of the greatest pieces of theater I’d ever seen so I was keen to see Orpheus X, a multi-media performance piece with drama, singing, instrumental music, and video, that recounts the ancient myth in contemporary terms. It has touches of genius, and is also somewhat tiresome, darn it!through the understructure in the small theater, you see through steel beams on the other side a pale, lovely looking naked woman with red hair, concentrating fiercely as she scribbles with chalk on glass set in the floor. It’s surprising, intriguing and seems of compelling importance. Inside, a video plays of the woman scribbling, seen from below the glass so everything’s reversed including a few intelligible Greek characters. The sound of scratching is its own music. I focused on every scribble, every shift of style and pace, feeling surely I’d learn something essential if only I concentrated hard enough. Rinde Eckert’s a genius! I thought. This fascinating segment, however, occurs before the play begins.

All the parts are sung as well as spoken, and Eckert’s Orpheus is a contemporary rock star whose lover, Eurydice, has been killed by a taxi in which Orpheus was riding in a no-fault sad accident. The play takes place largely where he lives but also in his studio, since the four-piece band is always on stage playing Eckert’s meditative music. Eckert grieves for Eurydice so that, like Achilles in his tent, he curls up in a corner and refuses to make music and bring joy to his fans, in spite of blandishments from his manager, the charismatic performer John Kelly. Eventually, as in the ancient myth, Orpheus makes it to Hades to bring his Eurydice back. Ultimately, like the ancient Orpheus but for a different, perverse reason, Orpheus loses Eurydice forever because while leading her out of Hades but before they’ve reached the land of the living, he sets eyes on her.

It’s always fun — as in Aristophanes’ Frogs — to get a look at Hades! Here the underworld is represented largely by John Kelly now playing an androgynous Persephone — Pluto, Cerberus, the river Lethe are referred to but not seen. Persephone’s song as Queen of Hades as sung by Kelly is an outstanding moment. We come to understand Eurydice’s chalk: on earth she’d been a poet, but Hades is where nothing lasts, including memory, so instead of her pens, here for writing she has only ephemeral chalk.With all this good material of the myth — that’s been a narrative success through the centuries — and with Eckert’s multi-faceted talent, and three fine performers, why isn’t this play more compelling? Why, in fact, short as it is, near the end, in a quiet moment came a loud yawn (I actually found myself checking my watch) though also at the end I heard behind me “he’s a genius”?

The most important reason is that Orpheus and Eurydice’s love doesn’t come across as real. They have no chemistry, and I never believed he missed her. This Orpheus mopes, but doesn’t yearn. Eckert seems more interested in acting, poetry, song, instrumental music, lighting and video than in Eurydice. Suzan Hanson, the pale skinned red-haired Eurydice has a nice operatic voice and an alluring figure but after a time one got tired of seeing her, again and again, naked and more naked, on the repetitive video.

It doesn’t help that while some of the poetry is interesting, the dialog is flat. “Do you love me?” “She’ll be back later.” “I love having breakfast with you.” Context doesn’t bring life to lines like that. It also doesn’t help that the singers are miked which tended to make their voices abrasive, particularly Eckert’s. Why, and in a small theater of all places, would professional performers use microphones?Above all, though, it’s about characters and what happens to them. In Orpheus X, the powerful and evidently eternal theme of love and loss is a scaffold for multi-media.

Orpheus X plays at The Duke on 42nd Street, Theater for a New Audience, West of Broadway in Manhattan, through December 20th.

Yvonne Korshak reviews Off-Broadway, Broadway, Film and Art

Tag: Duke on 42nd Street

Review | ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore | By John Ford | Directed by Jesse Berger | Duke on 42nd Street

Review | Orpheus X | Written and Composed by Rinde Eckert | Directed by Robert Woodruff | With Rinde Eckert, Suzan Hanson and John Kelly | Video by Denise Marika | Duke on 42nd Street | Theater for a New Audience