The Broken Heart

by John Ford

seen at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse on 24 March 2015

Directed by Caroline Steinbeis with Brian Ferguson as Orgilus, Amy Morgan as Penthea, Sarah MacRae as Calantha, Owen Teale as Bassanes, and Luke Thompson as Ithocles.

The play is set in Sparta, with references to the gods, Delphi and oracles to underline its pre-Christian milieu. The word 'spartan' evokes notions of stoicism and self-denial as ideal character traits; the modern connotations of frugality and austerity arise as the consequence of rigorous personal self-control, not as mere descriptions of the physical or economic environment. Thus there is an atmosphere of self-denial and self-control assumed to essential aspects of civic virtue, and this permeates and poisons the relationships in the play.

Conflict arises because Penthea's brother Ithocles forces her to marry Bassanes, a self-regarding and soon jealous older man, rather than her beloved Orgilus. The latter, though furious (as his name allows), leaves Sparta to spare Penthea further anguish - but his spartan self-control is not really complete as he returns in disguise, and becomes involved as a letter bearer between his sister and her lover, a firm friend of Ithocles - and hence a man of whom he instinctively disapproves. Since he has previously extracted a vow from his sister that she will not marry against his will, his agreement to act as a go-between is hardly propitious. Thus he has many conflicts of interest, though he is eventually persuaded to bless his sister's marriage.

In the meantime Bassanes misconstrues the meetings between Penthea and her now repentant brother and accuses them of incest. Ithocles, however, is only confiding in his sister his hopeless love for Calantha the princess of Sparta, and Bassanes is forced to withdraw his accusation. Ithocles welcomes Orgilus back to court, hoping to show by this generosity that he regrets his interference in his sister's love, but Penthea, exhibiting another aspect of spartan self-control, refuses to have anything to do with Orgilus as she is now married, even though for her the marriage is a sham.

At this point, as the foppish prince of Argos (Calantha's cousin) comes wooing the princess, the whole situation, though complex and full of cross purposes, could in fact be resolved as a romantic comedy - but instead things take a turn for the worse. It is as though the discords triggered by the usurping duke Frederick and Orlando's elder brother Oliver in 'As You Like It' had unravelled into further disaster instead of being reversed into a happy ending. Or, perhaps a more interesting example is the knife edge on which events in 'Romeo and Juliet' turn, so finely tipped to disaster that there were famous (or notorious) re-writes in which the lovers survived to be happy. In 'The Broken Heart' the uncertainty of outcome is stronger while viewing the first half of the play, simply because the play is less familiar.

The second half shows that the raging passions held back by self control rage even more through the denial, as Penthea starves herself to death, Ithocles, sick at heart over his sister and not convinced of Calantha's favour, welcomes ('stoically') the death meted out to him by Orgilus, and Orgilus himself devises a gruesome suicide disguised as judicial execution, the better to show how stoically he also meets death. Calantha, inheriting the queenship on the death of her father, disposes of the kingdom, publicly announces her love for the murdered Ithocles, and dies 'literally' of a broken heart - but clearly many hearts have been broken in the more idiomatic sense on the way.

The production makes full use of the strengths of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse - the candlelit ambience, the snuffing of many candles for crucial night scenes, the characters often carrying their own candles or sconces to highlight their faces when the main candelabras are raised high above the stage. The cast are excellent, handling the high-flown sentiments and curious detachment of their parts with confidence and conviction. Owen Teale's Bassanes, who could so easily have become the stock foolish old husband, or a mocked pomposity like Malvolio, achieves a pathetic dignity as the only (figuratively) brokenhearted character to survive. There is also an interesting (though inconsistent) use of Scottish accents to remind us that Sparta is not the hub of Greekness, but rather something of an outpost with a mixed population. Orgilus thus can use standard pronunciation as part of his disguise.