Extreme Bawdry in Adelaide

The Custom of the Country
By John Fletcher and Philip Massinger

A moved playreading
Directed by Alexander Kirk
Original music by Alexander Mitchell
University of Adelaide Theatre Guild

A rare theatrical treat!

June 7 & 8

This production of The Custom of the Country continues our exploration of the byways of 17th and early 18th century theatre, which began in 2005 with Susanna Centlivre's The Wonder and continued in 2006 with Edward Ravenscroft's The London Cuckolds.

Jacobean tragicomedy is famous for the surprising turns its various actions can take, and The Custom of the Country is no exception.

The newly married Arnoldo and Zenocia, to prevent Count Clodio exercising his droit de seigneur on their wedding night, flee their Italian city along with Arnoldo's brother, Rutilio. The scene shifts to Lisbon when their boat is captured by the Portuguese sea captain, Leopoldo. Then their real troubles begin!

The Custom of the Country is a skilful mixture of tragicomic romance and farcical bawdry in the guise of a chastity play. In the end, chastity and marriage triumph over lechery and lust.

A new music score, to be performed by a vocal and instrumental chamber ensemble conducted by the composer, is being specially composed for this production. Composer Alexander Mitchell graduated from the University of Adelaide's Elder Conservatorium in 2005 with First Class Honours in a Bachelor of Music (Composition). He is now completing a Masters and his music for The Custom of the Country forms part of that work.

First performed in 1619, The Custom of the Country was deplored for its bawdiness but continued to delight and shock audiences until the mid-Restoration. It is a rare theatrical treat and our production, we believe, is an Australian premiere.

TWO PERFORMANCES ONLY, on Thursday 7 and Friday 8 June at 7pm in the Little Theatre. All tickets $10.

See http://www.adelaide.edu.au/theatreguild/current/custom/ for booking info.

[This could be fabulous. The Custom of the Country is a notoriously filthy play (look -- Wikipedia agrees), featuring not only the droit de seigneur alluded to in the title, but also a tremendously funny scene set in a male brothel established for the benefit of ladies and gentlewomen. (Do you get such things with Shakespeare? I think not.) The hero's brother, Rutillio (oh yes), on the run because he thinks that he has murdered the Governor's nephew, is adopted as a "stallion" for the brothel. Being a virile sort of lad, he thinks that all his birthdays and Christmases have come at once: "Bring me a hundred of em: I'le dispatch 'em ... I'le make you young againe, beleeve that Lady. I will so frubbish you" ("frubbish"? Ah -- "frubbish": "To furbish or polish by rubbing" [OED]). Sadly, the next time we see Rutillio, halfway through the next act, he has been -- ahem -- exhausted by the attentions of the ladies and gentlewomen. He enters "in a night-cap", is joined by three ex-employees of the brothel, who enter "with night-caps very faintly", and they all sit around and moan about their aching bones:

Rut[illio]. Good Gentlemen;
You seem to have a snuffing in your head Sir,
A parlous snuffing, but this same dampish aire---

2[nd Gentleman]. A dampish aire indeed.

Rut[illio]. Blow your face tenderly,
Your nose will ne're endure it: mercy ô me,
What are men change'd to here? is my nose fast yet?
Mee thinks it shakes i'th hilts

And we wonder why Fletcher fell out of favour so radically in the C19th... Project Gutenberg have a text here (apparently from Glover and Waller's early C20th edition of the works of "Beaumont and Fletcher"), if you fancy corrupting your mind and/or morals.]