Review: ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore ****

At West Yorkshire Playhouse

This is like Shakespeare as though written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Torture, the blackest of comedy, religious symbolism and, by the end, blood everywhere, this production is a triumph for director Jonathan Munby.

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John Ford’s play was first performed a decade after the death of Shakespeare, the playwright wasting little time in plundering the best of the Bard’s work and giving it a twist that remains, 400 years later, almost post-modern, dealing as it does with a taboo that has lasted the ages – incest.

At the heart of Ford’s play is a love story between brother and sister Giovanni and Annabella. Ford clearly stole the plot of Romeo and Juliet – the parallels are many (a confidant nurse and priest, an unwanted suitor), but he also lifted from Hamlet (death by poison – there is even a mention of women and frailty) and more of Shakespeare’s work.

What is mind boggling is that he appeared also to flip the Bard’s work to create a piece that retains a power to shock today.

Much of this is in the writing, much more is in Munby’s confident, almost cocky, direction.

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The strength of his cast is variable. The younger members do not fare quite so well as the older, but Munby manages to find just what he needs from each of his performers to create a piece of theatre that is full of style and substance.

The director commands the vast stage of the Quarry theatre, filling it in a way that has not happened too often in recent years. As a production, it is the closest thing we’ve seen in Yorkshire to the triumphant Don Carlos at the Crucible under Michael Grandage, which transferred to the West End. They’ll be lucky to get this.

To May 28.