Brighton Fringe 2023
The Burning of a Sicilian Whore (Blood Rain)
Giulia Menichelli
Genre: Drama, One Person Show, Storytelling
Venue: Friends’ Meeting House
Festival: Brighton Fringe
Low Down
An atmospheric performance, depicting a Sicilian courtesan and her radical approach to female empowerment.
Review
Giulia Menichelli charmingly performs as Giulia Tofana, a seventeenth century Sicilian courtesan, turned poisoner. We enter the Friends’ Meeting House performance room, greeted by Menichelli, obviously at ease with receiving visitors, welcoming the audience. The atmosphere is enhanced by clever use of fragrances (candles, incense sticks) and the Mediterranean feel is neatly completed by oranges being placed at every audience chair. It is immediately sensual and inviting. Tofana’s tale is by no means historically certain, so Menichelli has added her own layer to proceedings.
We learn of the courtesan, her family backstory and her life in Palermo. Having taken up the profession in question, she draws a distinction between the run of the mill sex worker and professional courtesan ; she believes that part of the experience for the customer is to be seduced, an early tell as to her ambitions. Portishead’s Glory Box is cleverly woven into the narrative, whose lyrics “I’ve been a temptress too long” contain a certain prescience. The spirit of Palermo is evoked, referred to as a “big, fat whore”, a visceral description, not intended to be insulting. Menichelli fluidly flits between characters and the extent of the patriarchal society that she inhabits begins to take shape – fathers, brothers, husbands, all products of their environment and moment in history certainly, but many of whom oppressors, nonetheless. The central protagonist becomes a poisoner and prolifically distributes this Aqua Tofana to other women, with a view to removing the men in their lives. She has to leave Palermo for Rome, having made a powerful enemy, but the business continues unabated. She is eventually condemned as a witch, leading to an inevitable denouement.
All of this is conveyed charmingly by Giulia Menichelli. She is a skilled and engaging storyteller, who transports the audience to seventeenth century Italy. The scirocco wind (the wind whipped up from the Sahara Desert, bringing blood coloured rain to southern Europe) is symbolic of the turmoil and turbulence of the era. The audience has a juxtaposed emotion regarding the central character : while she is enabling female empowerment, pushing back against the patriarchal society she inhabits, she is causing and facilitating the premature deaths of hundreds of people. The show is not perfect at all, but there is more than enough for the audience to drink in.
Denouncing women as witches was a repressive tool of choice in many cultures over centuries : midwives being seen as taking work from male doctors, exacting retribution arising from a perceived slight or simply the opportunity to replace one wife with another. When Tofana is asked to confess, her reply that if she complies, she will no longer be a sister or a daughter, brings to mind John Proctor’s demise in The Crucible.
Women have struggled for a voice for centuries, whether it is societal issues such as suffrage or equality of employment rights, or simply to have influence within a family household. Across the planet in the twenty-first century, they suffer domestic abuse, arranged marriages, honour killings and are frustrated by glass ceilings. Portishead’s Glory Box goes on to lament “just take a little look, from our side, if you can”, but to seventeenth century Tofana there must have seemed little prospect of this happening. The theme of female empowerment, intelligently and skilfully played out here, is well noted.
