The Strange Undoing of the Rape Myth

The Scottish play – no, not that Scottish play, rather The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart – is at once all about tradition and in complete violation of tradition. It’s an oxymoron that makes you want to shout with joy, and a show that allows you to do just so while you’re watching it. Ostensibly, it is about Prudencia Hart, an academic studying Scottish border ballads and, as we will discover, observing life rather than living it. She is the expert on the topography of Hell, a topic that, while laughable to her colleagues who don’t take border ballads near seriously enough for Prudencia’s taste, will later come in handy for Prudencia.

In addition to being a show about border ballads, this show is a border ballad. It is performed in a pub (the theatre having been converted), in verse, and with occasional music and dancing. It embraces many Scottish traditions while – in a performance such as the one I attended, at Santa Monica’sBroad Stage – breaking traditional theatre tradition.  The audience is seated at tables, served whiskey and sandwiches, and asked to participate in the show. They shred and then toss the bits of white napkin to create “snow” and when called upon, they murmur or cheer as called for, not to mention the greater involvement of a few guests who are specially chosen by performers. Earning such a role could land you as an anthropomorphized motorcycle or recipient of a rather involved lap dance that you didn’t order.

Often, when a show has such a creative and non-traditional style of performance – in a pub, interactive, song and dance – the format steals the show. This was the case recently with the opera Invisible Cities, performed at Los Angeles’ Union Station. You’re watching an opera unfold in a train station – how cool is that?! – so what if it’s near impossible to decipher any story. The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, however, does not fall prey to that trap. Rather, it is an excellent story well told and in it’s storytelling, again, both follow and breaks with tradition. Prudencia’s story follows in the grand tradition of border ballads, but it is a modern one. The Director confirmed my suspicions that border ballads are similar to Greek myths; often a female is captured by the devil and taken to hell. Only love can save her, the love of a hero who saves her, usually her “knight in shining armor” (or, in mythology, perhaps a mother, like Ceres whose love is ultimately able to bring her daughter Persephone back from Hades). The key takeaway is that in all of these border ballads and myths from our collective cultural histories, the girl needs to be saved. These are generally rape myths in which the women are captured or abducted by the devil and he has his way with her, “his way” generally being symbolically sexual if not explicitly so. The women of these stories don’t have control or choice, they are at the mercy of the devil and their lovers. But the team behind The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart, in writing a modern border ballad, has changed the game.

The first act of this show is written and performed in verse. Generally, for a show to be able to support verse, whether spoken or sung (as in a musical), there has to be an element of fantasy. Because, after all, we all live in the real world and know perfectly well that we don’t go around singing and speaking in verse. The fantasy element of the first act is that we are being told a story. The performers began the show with a ballad in song that tells the tale of Prudencia and, in verse, we are being told that tale. The second act, however, opens in prose. It is an unexpected departure from the rhythms we’d gotten used to, but it grounds us in reality. This is an interesting choice because the reality we’re grounded in is the first scene where Prudencia is trapped with the Devil. You’d think it would be the reverse, that entering the fictional world of the Devil we would start with the fantastical verse. However, Prudencia’s dialog with the Devil is real. We are no longer being told a story. We are now, in the prosaic moment, experiencing life with Prudencia. The prose continues for a while until it dawns on Prudencia that she can give in to love and, in doing so, take control. Love is embodied by the form of the ballad and she coaxes the Devil into communicating with her in verse. Interestingly, by giving in to love, she is also taking control. The Devil has held her captive for many thousands of years, but he hasn’t touched her. She wants freedom and her intelligence, her intimate knowledge of the nature of ballads, leads her to realize that she can write her own escape. She forces a switch from prose to poetry and in doing so becomes the author of her fate. She chooses to love the Devil, and then to leave him, a feminist twist if ever there were one. After she has done the heavy lifting, it’s true, the company does acknowledge the trope of having her “knight in shining armour” come to save her, but he hardly saves her. Her sworn enemy turned love interest is hardly the man who comes to save the day, but rather, someone who loves her enough to help her when she tells him how. Prudencia is neither victim nor damsel in distress. She’s a heroine who has learned her life lesson. The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart has rewritten the rape myth, taking out rape, and putting in consensual sex and active pursuit of love. In a fitting finale, Prudencia, who earlier ran out on her turn at karaoke and instead hid in the loo, has now found her song, and it happens to be Kylie Minogue.