But he’s avoiding nailing it down to any specific time and place – even the religious allegories won’t be overlaid too visibly or explicitly. The show will incorporate contemporary elements – video footage, modern music, film and television references – that he hopes will offer audiences a new “frame” and way to “see” the play. While Mariah Gale’s Isabella was an intense and still centrepoint, Dominic Rowan’s Duke, disguised in a daftly dodgy wig, was a comic bungler, making it all up as he went along.įor me, this fails to make sense of the Duke’s cruel behaviour: why delay telling Isabella that her brother is alive if you’re just a good guy trying to do the right thing? But the play was riotously enjoyable – and it proved that, yes, Measure for Measure could most certainly be a comedy. Viennese prostitutes and pimps romped rudely round the stage, squeezing maximum laughs from not always hilarious Shakespearean double entendre. How could it be anything but? The appeal of Measure for Measure to modern directors seemed set to be how the play reveals seedy corruption beneath political spin, and the dangers of zealous extremism (Anna Khalilulina’s Isabella initially coming across as an unwavering fundamentalist too, as intractable as Angelo).īut then, in July, came Dominic Dromgoole’s production – in his Shakespeare Globe house style, it was bawdy and merry. Watching this, I thought: problem solved – it’s a tragedy. Having taken a fancy to Isabella himself, the Duke then asks for her hand in marriage ….
The Duke, disguised as a friar, intervenes to save Claudio’s life, but allows Isabella to think him dead only when she ends up pleading for mercy for the now outed and condemned Angelo are the Duke’s secret machinations revealed. Isabella refuses even to consider this shameful sin. In doing so, she ignites a passion in Angelo, who offers to release Claudio – if she’ll sleep with him. Claudio’s sister, Isabella, is about to enter a convent, but instead goes to plead for her brother’s life.
Angelo’s first act is to sentence Claudio to death for impregnating his lover, Juliet. This glut is all the more unexpected given that it’s hardly a bankable big-hitter Measure for Measure is a comparatively little-seen “problem play”, which has a troubling blend of tragic and comic elements.Ī quick plot summary: the Duke of Vienna needs to clean up his licentious city – but hands the job to his deputy, Angelo (“a man of stricture and firm abstinence”) while he disguises himself to watch what unfolds. Shakespeare plays apparently being like proverbial buses, the third major production of Measure for Measure in 2015 is about to open at the Young Vic in London it follows Cheek by Jowl’s version at the Barbican and another at Shakespeare’s Globe.