Gabriella La Rocca reviews The Tabard’s ‘Lusting After Pipino’s Wife’

Have you ever felt like running away as soon as your girlfriend wants to get serious? Have you ever felt disappointment when your friend announces that she/he is getting married? Have you ever been trapped in suffocating and irritating periods with your spouse? Have you ever wondered why sex vanishes after you get married? And it goes on and on. From the very first scene you are catapulted with relationship problems that are too mindboggling until you get into the second half, hoping for some answers.

This is not comedy; it raises some serious questions but fails to give you the answers. Sex, love and passion are presented in this play as powerful forces that take over your life, they make you behave out of character, or maybe not, when in love you simply discover who you really are. The story also introduces adultery as a necessary change in a long term relationship then it quickly abandons it. You just wonder why infidelity is always given an Italian nationality.

Instead, in ‘Lusting after Pipino’s wife’ the playwright Sam Henry Kass provides a dichotomy of feelings: the normality of Rita and Patsy’s relationship and the unknown aspect of these forces in the shape of Vinnie and Lorraine who sting the audience with their dark sides, insecurities and misunderstandings.

For Patsy is simple – you meet, you fall in love and you get married. At least this is what he thinks until frustrated, outrageously angry and newly wed Rita says: ‘How things change quickly,’ as she cannot bear to be in the same room as her sexually starved husband, let alone sleep with him. All the while Vinnie is questioning relationships as the new couple develops or regresses, and Lorraine shows that the affairs of the heart are indeed very complex and cause criminal actions.

The cast is experienced and gives some mesmerising performances, Vanessa Bolt’s deep voice and steely gaze emphasise the edgy and dark character of Lorraine who is the direct opposite of Rita, played by Anna Scott. Jon Sidgewick creates Vinnie, a cheesy sleaze who lusts after anything and bonds very well with Mario Demetriou who plays Patsy, their energies flow with the female members of the cast.

October 8, 2008