"Tis Pity She's a Whore" begins with the dashing young Giovanni (Neil Basu '11) confessing his forbidden love for Annabella (Olivia Baptista '12). Beautiful and refined, Annabella would be a perfect match for Giovanni if she wasn't his sister. Disgusted by the siblings' illicit affair, an aghast friar (Jaymes Sanchez '13) warns Giovanni that such a union can only bring disaster. Ignoring the friar's advice, the two siblings pursue their love affair with help from their batty tutor Putana, (the wonderfully comic Lelia TahaBurt '11). Predictably, disaster ensues.
Throw in a jealous, psychotic widow (Susan Edwardson '12), a scheming, oily manservant (Sharang Biswas '12) and a noble rival for Annabella's love (Nick O'Leary '14) and the plot soon becomes muddled with deception, betrayal, revenge and murder.
The actors' realistic performances were impeded by the play's convoluted and confusing plot. Part of the confusion stemmed from the fact that Ford's work, originally five acts long, was considerably shortened for the performance.
Unlikeable characters also reduced the play's poignancy. All the actors were committed to the material, but none of the characters besides Annabella, the "whore" of the title was especially relatable.
The play also struggled with issues of tone: The first 20 minutes of the play seemed like a typical romantic comedy, in which after trials and tribulations everyone finally marries the right person and goes home happy. By contrast, later scenes veered sharply into the realm of high tragedy, with lots of yelling, stabbing, eye-gouging and threats of eternal damnation. The body count was high. The music, consisting of eerie synthesizers and discordant singing, was jarring, but did a decent job of conveying the sinister nature of the story.
The costumes evoked the mid-20th century without anchoring the play firmly to any one time period. Over the course of the show, the color palette of the costumes evolved from simple, neutral colors to darker, ominous ones. Unexpected additions of bright scarlet to dark costumes signaled the characters' descent into depravity.
Laeuchli utilized the Bentley's dynamic stage setup effectively. Much of the play's action was blocked on a long narrow runway down the middle of the Bentley, thus thrusting the audience into the middle of the action. The set was striking but not overbearing, with elegant columns flanking a wide stained-glass window. Overall, the minimalist design focused the audience's attention on the actors rather than props or sets.
Although "Tis a Pity She's a Whore" was extremely well acted and thoughtfully produced, the fact that "incest and murder have so strangely met" overshadowed Laeuchli's investigation of identity. Basu and Baptista portrayed the doomed lovers convincingly, but as an audience member it was hard to overcome the squeamishness associated with incest and become invested in the play's action.
The strengths of the second play, "Biography of a Constellation," more than made up for the first play's weaknesses. The set from "Tis Pity She's a Whore" worked surprisingly well for "Biography of a Constellation," serving believably as the Harvard Archives, a Greek palace and even a planetarium.
Kaplan's script artfully combines the narrative of Gregory (Basu) trying to write a eulogy for his grandmother's funeral with the story of a frustrated planetarium worker (Edwardson) trying to narrate the true story of Andromeda (Baptista) to school children. Using the life cycle of a star as a backdrop for these interweaving narratives, Kaplan slowly reveals details about Gregory's life and the legacy of his grandmother (an astronomer who catalogued stars for Harvard University, where Gregory now works). Meanwhile, the planetarium worker explains the story of Andromeda, the princess for whom the galaxy "the farthest thing away you can see with the naked eye" is named.
The play is touching, humorous and refreshingly irreverent. Andromeda is portrayed as a dedicated scientist, trying to escape her narcissistic mother (TahaBurt), who is more concerned with her own fame and her daughter's marriage prospects than Andromeda's intellectual pursuits. Similarly, local hero Perseus (O'Leary) is actually a "misunderstood visual artist" who just wants to paint.
The play deals with themes such as identity, family, and the relationship between art and science. Along with astronomy and the value of science, both music and painting are recurring motifs. Whereas the characters in "Tis Pity She's a Whore" had no choice in their identity, the characters in "Biography of a Constellation" ultimately show that they are free to make their own choices in life and that one can be both a scientist and a musician, a princess and an astronomer.
The two storylines merged in an organic way, aided by Laeuchli's skillful directing and the actor's compelling performances. In the end, the audience was rewarded with a conclusion both heartfelt and inspiring. Filled with surreal, dream-like images such as a boy and an old woman on a train to the moon, a princess chained to the sky and photographs of stars likened to fingerprints the play allowed the audience to relate to a diverse range of characters as they dealt with the all-important issues of love, life and death.
