Word: aquilae
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...bells of L'Aquila tolled dolorously last week in mourning for a missing Pope. The remains of 13th century Pope St. Celestine V -- a nearly intact skeleton with a wax face -- had been stolen from the city's basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio. Celestine occupied St. Peter's chair for five months in 1294, and then abdicated -- an act Dante alluded to as the "great refusal." He was canonized...
...followed the pair to the remains, stashed some 40 miles away. The figure of Celestine, still wearing miter and robes, was found lying on its red velvet cushion but concealed in a plywood box crammed into a burial niche in a local cemetery. The miscreants escaped. Back in L'Aquila, the bells rang again, this time in celebration...
Brustein's Changeling is thus about passion and virginity--though not of the Hail Mary, controversially-Catholic variety that recently has been thrust into the headlines. Here the reputation of virginity--protagonist Beatrice-Joanna Vermandero's (Diane D'Aquila) obsession to keep her honor intact--leads to doom and destruction. Female chastity is the ideal that justifies the most heinous atrocities...
...this strategy backfires. Brustein's carefully planned theoretical blueprint of the play is sabotaged by shoddy acting in several key roles. The chief blame rests with D'Aquila, whose mannish, histrionic performance never musters an ounce of sympathy. Her love affair with Alsemero (Harry S. Murphy) is discarded too early; and she changes into an evil murderess with only the slightest provocation, gushing at one point, "I am forced to love thee now for thou provides so well for mine honor...
Although the inevitability of Beatrice-Joanna's psychological paralysis is meant to move us, it doesn't because the gruff and ready D'Aquila hasn't accumulated any sweet-maidenhood points. We don't care that she makes love to a man she hates in order to obviate marrying another man she scorns (and all for the sake of a third man whom she loves but deceives). We like her so little we find it hard to view her tragic demise as anything but deserving comeuppance...