Word: lucrezia
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...Florentine artist filippino Lippi was the product of a scandalous 15th century love affair: his father, Filippo, an artist and Carmelite friar, was chaplain of Santa Margarita convent in Prato when he ran off with a beautiful nun named Lucrezia Buti. Their illegitimate son, coached by a Florentine painter, became one of the most famous artists of his age, known for the imagination and versatility of his work and patronized by the rich and powerful. The twist in the tale came four centuries later: Filippino's fame had long since faded when England's Pre-Raphaelites "discovered" the genius...
...Like Lady Kier of Deee-Lite! (The recording group, something like the B-52s of house music.) Ricki Lake, the rising talk-show host -- look out, Oprah -- was chatting with John Waters, who starred her in his fondly remembered camp comedy Hairspray. And there was -- yes! -- Shannen Doherty, the Lucrezia Borgia of nighttime TV, the Kilimanjaro of problems, as skinny as Kate Moss these days, chain-smoking in a little black dress...
Lisa Corpus plays Siro, Callimaco's servant, with a strained but effective air of impertinence. And Barbara Biddle is adequate, if not inspirational, as Lucrezia's mother...
Like similiar works, the play revolves around an elaborate seduction of a Florentine woman, Lucrezia. Callimaco, the youth who falls in love with her, teams up with the low-life Ligurio to deceive Lucrezia's husband into inviting the young man into his wife's bed. With the help of a potion of mandrake root and some well-placed bribery, Callimaco and company carry out the affair...
...production does have a few polished performances. Susannah Frith as Lucrezia is convincingly distraught over the moral dilemma in which her husband places her. Her conversion after her seduction is believable, but not overdone. Todd Lochner, the crooked friar who joins in the play's dirty deeds, puts on a deliciously wicked grin as he consorts with Ligurio and Callimaco "in the name...