‘Tis a Pity She’s a Whore

The Warehouse, 1019 7th Street NW

Remaining Performances:

Friday, July 16 at 8:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 17 at 10:00 p.m.
Sunday, July 25 at 6:30 p.m.

They Say: “A juicy story of secret lovers, betrayal, incest and revenge, among the most controversial plays in English literature — See it onstage: all the romance, all the lust, all the blood! From the theatre that brought you “Jack the Ticket Ripper.”"

Glen’s Take: The historical rap on ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore — the thing to which the Georgetown Theatre Company folks are referring, with that “most contrversial” jazz —  is that the play, written in 1629 or so, revels in debauchery (incest, bloody vengeance, post-mortem dismemberment, etc.) without ever carving out a moral center.

I know, right?  In a post-Tarantino America, the complaint seems kind of … adorable.

Props to director Alia Faith Williams and company for having done the hard, good work of paring a play that usually runs over three hours down to a spry-ish 90 minutes by neatly excising huge chunks of text. The result isn’t as clean as it could be — denied their respective subplots, Frank O’Donnell‘s Richardetto and Nathan Cederoth‘s Grimaldi just sort of hang around as if they’re waiting for the next bus out of town. But as a canny, quick-on-his-feet servant, Terence Aselford gets some nice, oily bits of business in, and Lindsay Duso sinks her teeth into her woman scorned with an unapologetic and at times downright operatic brashness that’s big, yes, but you can’t say it doesn’t fill the stage and goose the energy.

The two leads, Evan Crump and Jessica Shearer Wilson are only given one note to play, though you may wish for a bit more variation in tone from Crump’s Giovanni. Scene to scene, his delivery vacillates between insistent and shrill — and even if you’re prepared to cut him some slack on the forcefulness front, given that his character is both 1. a pompous academic and 2. consumed with boning his sister, it’d be nice to see more of an arc.

Playwright John Ford (no, not that one – but how awesome would THAT be?) wrote dialogue that’s clean, vigorous and often funny, and it’s done good service here.  The fight choreography’s tight, and features characters shouting things like “Have at you!” and “Vengeance!”,  which: Yes, please.

The much-discussed blood doesn’t really show up till the closing minutes, but when it does there’s gouts of it; and the play’s most famous image –a grisly cardio-kebab — will put you off Fort Fringe burgers for a day or so.

See it if: VC Andrews-brand siblings + “Have at you!” + Post-mortem dismemberment = Your winning formula.

Skip it if: You’re unwilling to wait a bit to get your visceral ya-yas out, and routinely eat dessert first.

Remaining performances:
July 24, 9:30 p.m.; July 25, 6 p.m.; July 26, 1 p.m.; July 27, 12 p.m.

They say: “Thousands of Years—Rome takes a Roman Legionnaire and a Senator’s daughter from their 1st Century parting in the Roman Forum to their 21st Century reunion there. They participate in the Roman conquests of Britain and Spain, the Renaissance, Unification of Italy, Nazi occupation of Rome, and the Iraq war.”

Ted’s take: Like the rape of the Sabine women or the reign of the Emperor Otho, this is an hour and change that I will never, ever get back. The accompanying wherefore, however, is hard to peg. Calling the play historical romance is an insult to that already debased epithet; calling the whole thing a vacuous cliché would be an insult to vacuums.

Take Dead Again, mix it with a little Forrest Gump and a touch of Quo Vadis, then toss in the “never let go” moment from Titanic, and you’ll have a good sense for this piece. Spanning twenty centuries (and making each look at its watch and squirm), Thousands of Years traces the ill-starred love of Octavia and Marius (or, after 800 A.D., Mario) through various pitfalls and entanglements including but not limited to:

• war
• sickness
• poverty
• bad luck
• “Daddy don’t approve”

and, last but not least,

• a toothsome, barely-clad Boadicea, to whose military superiority, leather undergarments, and general sexiness Marius eventually responds by making lotsa whoopee…

…thus spawning future hordes of Marii for the reenactment ad nauseum of said pitfalls and entanglements. The acting is difficult to watch, not merely because of the technical glitches in a technically spare show (before every gunshot scene, the audience hears whisper-shouts of “Two shots or three?” “It’s three.” “Three gunshots?” “Yes, three.” “Okay! Three gunshots”…and then the effect),* or even because the term doesn’t necessarily apply—it’s difficult to watch because one likes and feels for the actors nearly immediately, as one never can for the characters in whose service they toil.

The Washington Post, in its rather mindless promotion of this piece, exhorts readers: “When in Rome, Love as Romans Do, Over Again.” The proper epithet for my money? “Sic transit gloria…over and over again.”

See it if: You’ve always wondered why “bodacious” means what it means.

Skip it if: You believe, as I do, that reading a facing-page translation of Livy might provide a more titillating, better staged, and adequately lit experience.

*It bears acknowledging that the reviewer saw the show on opening night, and that these glitches may well right themselves in successive performances.

Remaining Performances:
Sunday, July 13 @ 5:30 PM
Saturday, July 19 @ midnight (canceled)
Saturday, July 26 @ 9 PM
Sunday, July 27 @ 6:30 PM

They say: “Presenting Opera Alterna, a new DC opera company dedicated to creating dynamic, provocative opera performances, brings two contemporary mini-operas exploring classic themes of love, relationships and miscommunication. Signor Deluso is a comedy based on Moliere’s Sganarelle & The Women, a surrealist look at the problems between mother, son, and his wife.”

Trey’s take: Good for Opera Alterna, a gaggle of young D.C.-area singers who take their stuff — but not themselves — too seriously. And bravo for whoever picked the repertoire: two brisk little shorts from a New York composer who was all the rage until the ’70s, then suddenly fell out of favor — and moved to Hollywood, where he helped score American Beauty and The Road to Perdition, among other films.

The first mini-opera is the more challenging — not atonal, but dissonant, it’s set in the afterlife and concerned with a mother and a wife warring eternally over the man who’s all they have in common. But it clocks in at a skinny 10 minutes or so, and its heavily Freudian overtones are familiar enough that it needn’t frighten any but the most hardened operaphobes.

Signor Deluso, a slightly more substantial one-act based on an early Moliere comedy, is decidedly more accessible: a jealous wife, an outraged but cowardly husband, a dopey ingénue who (like the husband) leaps to dubious conclusions, and a saucy maid to set everyone straight at last — you know the genre.

It’s all creditably sung and amusingly staged, and everyone’s doing their best — down to the projected surtitles, even though it’s all sung in English — to make it as unthreatening as a Friday night at the multiplex. And at $15, it’s a fair sight cheaper than a night out with the WNO.

See it if: You think it’s good that this year’s Fringe lineup seems a little more diverse, discipline-wise.

Skip it if: You sprout hives at the sound of young lovers warbling — however sweetly — about their passion.