TERRACE LITTLE Theatre takes a walk on the wild side with its latest production: Bella Donna.
Based on the life of the infamous Lucretia Borgia, Bella Donna is a very dark comedy of incest, betrayal, deception and murder.
“It’s very different from anything we’ve done for a long, long time,” says director Chris Stone, adding there’s three women characters in the play, two of whom are wanton and the third is a nun, but not a typical one.
And there’s sword play, at least one bedroom scene and a masquerade ball in this adult play.
Born in 1480, Lucretia was the illegitimate daughter of Rodrigo Borgia, who later became Pope Alexander VI.
She was married off to various men to advance her father’s and brother’s political ideas but not much is known about how much she actually participated in their schemes or about the rumours that blackened her reputation without any facts to back them up – poisoning, murder, incest.
After the death of her second husband, she married Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara in 1502. The play picks up her life some time after her marriage to Alfonso.
Excommunicated by her father’s successor as Pope, weary of her husband’s infidelities, the now infamous Lucretia finds passion with Giovanni, a young soldier she meets while both are in disguise.
Robin Hollett is Lucretia, John Dafoe is Alfonso, Sonja Foss is Angela, a ward of Alfonso and a countess in her own right, Bayani Generoso is Giovanni and Devon Huning is Sister Bibiana.
See City Scene for more details.