Being chaste in Cheapside

The Rose Playhouse

By MIKA ROSS-SOUTHALL

“A play of quite exceptional freedom and audacity and certainly one of the drollest and liveliest that ever broke the bounds of propriety or shook the sides of merriment.” So wrote Algernon Charles Swinburne, as a pencil note in his copy of Thomas Middleton’s A Chaste Maid in Cheapside. Is it surprising that a city comedy, first published in quarto in 1630, could provoke such a reaction some two centuries on? And, I’d say, still do so?

Last night I saw a rip-roaring production at the Rose Playhouse in Southwark, which runs until March 28. As directed by Jenny Eastop, A Chaste Maid has a post-war setting, replicating the era of teddy boy teenagers and swinging circle skirts. A soundtrack consisting of Motown, Elvis and The Beatles guides us through the fast-paced, often bewildering, plot.

At the centre of Middleton’s play is Moll Yellowhammer, the only young virgin left – her mother and father (a wealthy goldsmith) despair – in London’s Cheapside. She’s in love with a poor man, Touchwood, but her parents betroth her to Sir Walter Whorehound, a philandering gentleman (fancifully attired here in knee-high red socks and tweed) who is having an affair with the wife of Allwit. A knowing cuckold, Allwit is tremendously pleased with this set-up so long as Sir Walter continues to pay. In a subplot, meanwhile, Touchwood's brother is so fertile that he’s forced to leave his wife – to prevent them from having any more children that they can’t afford – and sell his impregnating services, disguised as a fertility potion, to couples who find it difficult to conceive.

Moll and Touchwood. Photo: Bethany Blake

Depraved morals, physical grossness, mercurial obsession and ambition to climb up the greasy pole of social influence are all abundant in this view on the city, and alarmingly – even for last night’s audience – thoroughly revelled in. The Rose's revival is neatly cut to fit into ninety minutes without an interval, racing from one farcical situation to another. Timothy Harker is a perfect, compact Allwit (camp, elegantly suited-and-booted and not above gleefully singing about dildoes), in contrast to Andrew Seddon’s towering, sleazy Sir Walter. Some novel touches helped bring Middleton’s words up to date: when Sir Walter arrives at the Yellowhammers’ house, Moll mutters “Ugh death!”, then collapses in a sulk on a chair; later on, embarrassingly outwitted by the Touchwoods, Sir Walter desperately splutters after them, “losers!”.

More traditional is the minimal scenery. Two garden chairs and two arches (one with goldsmith’s weighing scales indicate the Yellowhammers’ house, the other with bull’s horns for the cuckold Allwit’s) sit either side of the stage – which is, in fact, a viewing platform for the archaeological site of the sixteenth-century Rose theatre. (This alone warrants a visit.) And if there are practical constraints on the props and scenery that can be used, it doesn’t affect the richness of the production.

I saw an excellent rendition of John Lyly’s The Woman in the Moon, here, a few months ago; again, a strong ensemble and simple staging. This time, though, A Chaste Maid uses the whole excavation – stunningly illuminated with red strip lights reflected in pools of water (see the top photograph) – for an amusing silent-film-style chase when Moll and her lover try to elope. They’re caught; there’s a sword fight; almost a death; and, finally, a marriage.

Little remorse is shown by the characters for their devious behaviour; cynicism is triumphant. Perhaps this isn’t quite what Middleton intended with his happy ending. But – the Rose being directly across the river from Cheapside and the City of London – it's irresistible to read the play now as a warning to those self-satisfied operators who still congregate there.