Play: It's True, It's True, It's True

Wasn't planning on anything much today - but the selection on telly was pretty poor. I mean honestly - out of the six channels available, a different crime show on each simultaneously?! Pretty indistinguishable, too. So my mother went to bed early. And I decided to see what others had been doing on Meetup.

And wouldn't you know it, Up in the Cheap Seats was watching It's True, It's True, It's True. Now, I was supposed to see this live - in the Barbican, last month. Until the world shut down, for coronavirus. Well bless them, they're streaming it on their website! for the rest of the month. I was too late to watch with the others - but boy, was I glad I saw it myself.

Staged by three women, interchanging roles, this is a reconstruction of the real-life trial concerning the rape of one Artemisia Gentileschi, an aspiring, 15-year-old painter, born in Rome towards the end of the 16th Century. Wow, she couldn't have picked a better part of the world to be born in, at the time! Not given her chosen profession. It was unusual for respectable young women of the day to have any profession at all, but her father was also a painter, and she was by far the most talented of his children, it seems.

Naturally, the house was frequented by other painters. And one, in particular - Agostino Tassi - seems to have been a really shady character. Now, the acting is generally good in this production - but I have to give a special shout-out to Sophie Steer, who plays him as the most weasly, slimy, unlikeable chancer imaginable. Completely believable, and quite androgynous in this - I had to keep reminding myself she was a woman.

So, long story short, he seized an opportunity when they were alone, and raped her. However, he then seems to have promised to marry her - the only solution for a woman whose honour had been besmirched. And it was only when he reneged on that promise that she and her father took him to court..

True story. The trial lasted for seven months, and was the talk of the town, it seems - the play is formed from the existing transcripts. And wow, is it juicy! Played with passion, it's a real expression of girl power.. but also sensitive to the feelings of the participants, injecting some real-life emotion into what must have been quite dry documents to read.

Notable is how a couple of her early paintings - while depicting biblical themes - are used to illustrate her feelings about what was happening to her at the time. Not an invention of the playwright, it seems - it was already thought that her experiences influenced the content of the paintings. The first, Susanna and the Elders, depicts Susanna, who's come out to bathe in her garden, being leered at by a couple of "respectable" older gents, who've forced their way in - she looks most disturbed. In the second, however, we have Judith and her handmaiden severing the head of a chap called Holofernes - much more assertive women.. And her passionate description of these paintings, and the thought behind them, during the play mightily enriches the experience.

The play is both absorbing and shocking - and it's reassuring to know that, in real life, she became a celebrated painter, married another painter (although it didn't work out) and had a daughter. Tassi? Well, he didn't really get his just desserts. Although he didn't exactly get away scot free. Highly recommended!

Nothing else planned till Saturday - but as usual, watch this space. I'm thinking film for then, again.. still haven't watched Planet Earth's next-highest rated episode, #3: Fresh Water!