Must-see, must-hear Shakespearean monologue
It's hard to know which is more astonishing: the revelation of a work by Shakespeare unknown to almost everybody, or the impassioned performance by Dan Hodge in delivering the epic poem The Rape of Lucrece. Either way, this production by the Philadelphia Artists Collective is not to be missed.
It's hard to know which is more astonishing: the revelation of a work by Shakespeare unknown to almost everybody, or the impassioned performance by Dan Hodge in delivering the epic poem The Rape of Lucrece. Either way, this production by the Philadelphia Artists Collective is not to be missed.
The heat on Saturday in the non-air-conditioned Broad Street Ministry left Hodge totally drenched with sweat, adding to the steamy tale of lust and rape and suffering. The story of Lucrece, the beautiful and faithful wife of Collatinus, who is raped by her husband's friend and guest the powerful Roman Tarquin, is a sadly familiar story. When, in the midst of her ravishment, she asks why he is attacking her, Tarquin replies, "The fault is thine." She is lovely, she is pure, and so she must have been asking for it.
What Shakespeare understood, in the way he seems to have understood every human emotion, is that for a woman, rape becomes a permanent psychological wound. If the man is caught, well, what's the worst that can happen? Prison or banishment. Shakespeare understood that men will often "sell eternity to get a toy" and that "Opportunity" - you do wrong just because you can - is the dire fact of life: "Heinous hours wait" to seize the chance to commit a horror.
Hodge dramatizes the poem, narrating events in his own rich baritone, lightening its timbre for Lucrece, creating fierce animalistic growls for Tarquin in the "sable night, mother of dread and fear" during the rape scene, deepening his voice to a gravelly old man's for Lucretia's heartbroken father. Hodge's body language is remarkable: his cringing, terrified modesty for Lucrece, and then her disgust with her own body after the terrible fact. It is a tour-de-force performance, riveting and absolutely accessible.
Working with no set or costumes and one prop - a candle that creates visually stunning lighting effects (Katherine Fritz designed the show) - this is theater without a net, a 90-minute monologue in rhymed couplets. A man tells an assembled group of people a story; watching this production is to suddenly understand the oral tradition, the bard holding us rapt with just his voice.
FRINGE REVIEW
The Rape of Lucrece
Sept. 8, then Sept. 11 through 15 at 9 p.m. at Broad Street Ministry, 315 S. Broad St. Tickets: $20. Information: FringeArts.com
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