In living tableau of painting by Artemisia Gentileschi (Emily Anderson, right) in Marin Theatre’s It’s True, It’s True, It’s True, the artist and Judith (Alicia M. P. Nelson. left) behead Holofernes (Maggie Mason). All photos by David Allen.[yasr_overall_rating]
By WOODY WEINGARTEN
Rape.
That should be as offensive as any other four-letter word in the English language today, despite many of our society’s males consistently downplaying it.
Still, it was a tad worse 400 years ago.
At least that’s what’s displayed in It’s True, It’s True, It’s True, a dramatic polemic of sorts that runs at the Marin Theatre through May 4.
The play does focus on a positive theme — 15-year-old Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi using her paints and canvas to display her anger and pain and to get a taste of revenge for being sexually assaulted.
It’s a true tale.
Playwrights Ellice Stevens and Billy Barrett — and especially director Rebecca Wear — have mainly through exaggeration inserted just enough humor to keep the women in the audience in their seats instead of jumping up and screaming demands of female empowerment.
Elders (Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, left) and Maggie Mason) burst onto the scene. Behind them is a sign with an ironic motto in Latin that translates to “All are equal in the eyes of the law.”
Rock music loud enough to obscure virtually all lyrics pops up at various times, played and sung at top decibels by the all-female Actors Equity cast of four. That, along with costumes by Pamela Rodriguez Montero that merge 1612 courtroom attire and 2025 black leather-and-glitz punk band garb, makes some moments jagged because the two timeframes don’t fit together seamlessly.
About a third of the script — a reenactment of a real-life he-said, she-said courtroom drama — stems from verbatim records, translated into modern English that might be spewed by street people in Berkeley, that had been preserved (though the final pages were lost).
Emily Anderson plays Artemisia Gentileschi, the victim, one moment her face flashing rage at being raped, the next flaunting a satirical exuberance from a male perspective. Clearly, she can be demure or filled with piss and vinegar.
Anderson is exceptionally potent when she becomes part of living tableaus depicting two of the Baroque artist’s paintings (“Judith Slaying Holofernes” and “Susanna and the Elders”). In those moments, she’s aided significantly by the astonishing lighting of Mikiko Uesugi and resounding sound effects by Matt Stines.
Anderson is superb, too, in a scene where she, totally frustrated, poignantly repeats the phrase “It’s true,” dozens of times.
Maggie Mason, in the gender-bending role of Renaissance Italian painter Agostino Tassi, is appropriately lecherous, cocky, and snarky — and is as apt to slyly insert into his testimony his credentials as staff artist for the Pope as he is to deny any culpability as a rapist.
The judge (Alicia M. P. Nelson, rear) listens to testimony of Tuzia, Artemisia’s confidante (Keiko Shimosato Carreiro).
As the black-robed judge, another male part, Alicia M.P. Nelson is pointedly personality-less, a sharp contrast to when she shows her acting range in several minor roles and her energy as the band’s lead singer.
The hour and a quarter show dissolves the century gap to reveal a plotline reflecting how gender equality is absent, how biased judges can allow victims to become de facto defendants, and how repeated lies can erase truth. Do those concepts replicate today’s headlines? Yes.
The performance also reveals not only how enemies are enemies but how so-called friends may not be trustworthy either. Keko Shimosato Carreiro portrays Donna Tuzia, supposed confidante to Artemisia, who wavers on the stand trying to gain favor with both sides. She flails her arms a lot.
It’s True, It’s True, It’s True is a flawed but fascinating experimental effort filled with content that some folks may dislike: the applying of thumb screws to Artemisia;; the grisly display of beheading and sex scenes (oral, anal, and self); the close-up look at naked breasts.
But those eager for something different, those willing to check out this story about the first woman to enter the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno in Florence in spite of having been slut-shamed and having had to battle gender inequality again and again, will appreciate having their brain massaged.
Even if the actors occasionally drop lines, and the set is practically non-existent.
Think rape. Think the #MeToo movement. Think a world of alternative facts. Think of yourself or your sister or your daughter. Think. Then shudder.
It’s True, It’s True, It’s True runs in the 99-seat Lieberman Theater in the Marin Theater, 397 Miller Ave., Mill Valley, through May 4. Tickets: $10 to $81 (plus $6 handling fee per total order). Info: https://www.marintheatre.org or 415-388-5208.
Sherwood “Woody” Weingarten, a longtime member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theater Critics Circle and the author of four books, can be contacted by email at voodee@sbcglobal.net or on his websites, https://woodyweingarten.com and https://vitalitypress.com.
