JOHN Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, written in the 1620s and set in Italy, has incest as its central theme, and has been one of the most controversial plays ever performed.

Not seen in England until 1923, the tragedy surrounds the bookish young Giovanni, returning from university and realising that he is in love with his sister Annabella. While the priest is striving to rid the boy of his mortal sin, their father is busily arranging a marriage for his daughter.

The current Cheek by Jowl production of the play, on stage at Bath Theatre Royal until 7th June, not only sets the story in modern dress but underlines how little has changed in 400 years. Stories of arranged marriages, family feuds and resultant murders are commonplace on the news.

Declan Donnellan’s production opens with the wild disco dance of Annabella’s imagination and progresses through a sultry summer of venal hopes and testosterone, always seen through the virgin/whore expectations with which women are surrounded.

This is a brutal, sexy and invasive reading of the play, powerfully played by the Cheek by Jowl company. Movement director Jane Gibson and composer Nick Powell ensure that the unavoidable maelstrom of the affair involves not the bodies on stage but the minds of the audience.

The image of the duplicitous baddie, Vasques, (slyly played by Will Alexander), cradling the sobbing body of the rejected Hippolita, is extraordinary.

Orlando James strips the romance from Giovanni and instead injects a psychotic obsession for his young sister, innocently mirrored by Eve Ponsonby’s Annabella.

Of course it can only end in tears, and tears that roll on through the ages.

GP-W