The long-running UK theatre company Cheek By Jowl has gained a reputation for updating classics of English literature, and the present production is no exception. John Ford’s 1633 tragedy ‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore has been infamous since its first staging. Depicting an incestuous relationship between siblings Giovanni and Annabella, as well as the violent consequences of their passion, it is easy to understand why – though the reason for the controversy is not so much the play’s content as it is Ford’s refusal to condemn his protagonists’ illicit love. Instead Ford depicts the hypocrisy of a society obsessed with honour and status, and of a church willing to forgive and forget sin in order to preserve the status quo.

Removing the play from its 17th century Italian setting, the set depicts an interior view of Annabella’s bedroom – a typical rebellious teenager’s lair with blood-red walls and posters depicting various TV shows and films, including one or two with conspicuous vampire themes. This setting is specific enough to give an insight into Annabella’s immaturity at the start of the play, but also general enough to accommodate the lurid fantasy sequences built into the action by director Declan Donnellan, and it quickly becomes clear that the play’s social criticism has been left aside in order to create something more darkly psychological. Scenes blur into each other seamlessly using some strikingly cinematic directorial techniques, and when the actors pass across the stage it is sometimes hard to gauge whether they are part of the action or merely projections of the of the characters’ fantasies and obsessions. This lurid psychological intensity mirrors that of the language used in the play, so that the frequent imagery centring on vice, lust and damnation acquires a particularly vivid force here.

Despite the rapid pace of the production (in which an entire subplot and group of characters have been excised from the original), the director’s attention to detail is superb. With so many actors continually on-stage in many scenes it would be easy to dilute the overall effect but the stage is expertly managed throughout, as the tone veers from the broadly comic to the disturbing and violent with unsettling smoothness and without ever losing the audience’s attention. Overall, this is an excellent production that provides a startling new take on a classic play.

Jozef van der Voort