The Revenger’s Tragedy, dir. Anne Thuot, The Lowry, 19-21 November
Produced and performed by the Belgian physical theatre company FAST ASBL, The Revenger’s Tragedy is less a performance or even an adaptation of the Jacobean revenge tragedy of the same name than a stark anatomization of its treatment of women. The 1606 play, now generally thought to be the work of Thomas Middleton, is set in an unnamed Italian court, and follows Vendice, the revenger of the title, on a journey through a web of intrigue, violence and political manoeuvre, to avenge the poisoning, and possible rape, of his lover Gloriana by the lecherous Duke nine years prior to the beginning of the play. This updated version takes the original’s sexual violence and uses it as a jumping off point for an exploration of rape, the silencing of victims, and society’s attitudes and responses to rape and sexual assault, in the 21st century as much as in the 17th. At times difficult to watch, this is a brave, and also darkly ironic, piece of theatre, which clearly desires to impart a message to its audience.
The play opens with its cast of five actors seated at a metal table on an almost entirely bare stage. They introduce themselves and The Revenger’s Tragedy to the audience: “If I had to summarise it in two words I would say ‘revenge’ and ‘tragedy’”. They then enact, in an improvisational, workshop style, various sections from it, with actors sharing and switching between roles. The exaggerated and slightly hammy way in which four of these five actors play with over-the top hand gestures and stereotypical Italian accents is comic, but by way of contrast makes the silence of the fifth actor, Sara Sampelayo, all the more unnerving.
Sampelayo plays the roles of Gloriana and the unnamed wife of a minor character, Antonio, both of whom are raped and killed before the original Jacobean tragedy begins. Although she remains silent throughout, her presence dominates the production. Perhaps metonymic for all women silenced by sexual violence, Sampelayo’s body is used as the means by which various male attitudes and responses to rape are performed and deconstructed. Particularly striking was the moment when Gloriana’s body is discovered by her lover, Vendice, his mother Gratiana, and sister, Castiza. Vendice’s histrionic wailing is undercut by the stark tableau – Sampelayo’s half naked body laid out across a table – which is allowed to speak for itself.
The production also lingers over the relationship between Vendice and his sister, Castiza, during the nine years between the rape and murder of Gloriana and the beginning of the original play. Castiza describes herself as having been “filled with her brother’s melancholy”, perhaps a comment on the way in which women in Renaissance tragedy so often function to accentuate the suffering of men, and are denied the experience of sorrow or grief on their own terms.
The experimental style, lack of any discernible plot-line or clear structure, and barrage of repeated images and motifs of rape, might put some viewers off. Yet in my opinion this denial of any kind of easy narrative or comfortable conclusion is exactly the point that FAST ASBL want to make. The play constitutes a resounding refusal to the use of violence against women to dramatize the tragedy of the male revenger, explicitly denying both the consolation that revenge might offer, and the catharsis that tragedy offers its audience. In the final moments of the play Sampelayo’s unnamed rape victim twists and contorts herself, screaming wordlessly, as though trying to vomit, or purge herself in some way. This cathartic release is never achieved, however, and the play simply ends there, disallowing its audience the comfort of any kind of satisfying conclusion.
The Revenger’s Tragedy is not in any way an easy watch, and might perhaps be criticised for trying to pack too much in the way of moral message into a 75 minute production, but at the same time it keeps its tongue firmly in its cheek, and is courageous in its attempt to ask us as viewers to reconsider our own responses to both sexual violence and to the consolations offered by tragedy.
Annie Dickinson