“‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore” Closes A.C.T. Season on a Screaming High Note

As the curtain rises for the John Ford’s intense and action-packed, yet rarely performed 1630s play, an angelic cellist (composer/performer Bonfire Madigan Shive) showers the audience with red-hot sounds of her melodic and threatening music. A multi-layered set, adorned with cathedral-like organ pipes, flickering lights, and beaded glass threads of partition walls (scenery by Walt Spangler) opens up into a stairwell, where the story of forbidden love and revenge unfolds in short tense scenes and fiery dialogs. The poor man’s “Romeo and Juliet” could have seemed antiquated and too bloody to suspend disbelief if it were not for Carey Perloff’s educated directorial approach. The theater’s artistic director intentionally tries our contemporary placidity, political correctness, and an embedded in our culture longing for happy endings with her interpretation of a Jacobian moralist’s didactic piece as a challenge to societal norms and reality-defying behavioral standards. In this contemporary interpretation, the author’s sincere final statement (also a title) about a deserved punishment for an outrageously sinful behavior acquires an ironic double meaning as an unfair sentencing of a lost soul, which happens to be a female, punished primarily for that. The whole play, dedicated to the horrors of multiple crimes against morality, turns into contemplation on human nature, it’s inherent flows, and the prevalence of anti-human measures to fight those flows throughout history. A brother (Michael Hayden) and a sister (Rene Augesen) in 17th century Parma are guilty of incest, but their accusers are the unsavory characters that carry on moral and religious dogmas in a corrupt society. Being a distinct period piece, designed to entertain the public for many hours, and to provide detailed and valuable life lessons, the play brims with subplots and sidekicks, with comic relief delivered by A.C.T.’s own gem Gregory Wallace (in the role of Bergetto). Costumes (Candice Donnelly) and lighting (Robert Wierzel) play perfectly into the ensemble and crew harmonious production that makes the show a feast for the senses, however “disturbing” (an inevitable viewer’s remark, read: unconventional, but isn’t that what the theater is famous for?) "‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore" runs through July 6 at 415 Geary St., SF. Tickets at: 415-749-2228. http://www.act-sf.org/.