MEASURE FOR MEASURE. To 12 April.
Oxford.
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
by William Shakespeare adapted by Jonathan Holmes.
The North Wall To 12 April 2008.
1-4, 7, 9-12 April 7.30pm. 5 April 8pm Mat 2.30pm 10, 12 April, 4pm 5 April.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 01865 766266.
Review: Timothy Ramsden 287 March.
Fine to look at, but verse-speaking often doesn’t help.
Though Shakespeare’s plays have been radically adapted for different purposes, Jonathan Holmes’ version for Oxford’s Creation Theatre Company attempts to come close to the lost original. Stating that the familiar version of the script has additions by others, notably the notable playwright Thomas Middleton, reflecting concerns up to 20 years after the 1604 play’s premiere, Holmes has edited the accepted script to focus on the bible-based title.
This gives, he states, urgency to the latter half of the action, aimed at preventing Claudio’s execution. Much of the Venetian brothel comedy is cut, reducing the sense of an easier attitude to sex that counterpoints Angelo’s strict enforcement of the law. It reduces the vitality of the comic characters, the kind who Shakespeare enjoyed and saw as dangerous simultaneously (the Henry IV plays being the clearest example).
The world of Charlotte Conquest’s production accordingly becomes a prison. Bars line the stage’s sides, before being wheeled on to create the central cell where Claudio is kept, then ultimately, at an ending which avoids a sense of resolution, lining across the stage front to keep all the characters incarcerated together.
It starts well, the Duke of Vienna clearly suffering work-related stress as he sits at his desk, the first of several prisons, actors circling him, fluttering pieces of paper. But the Duke doesn’t do well in his manipulations when disguised; Isabella has rarely been so shocked or unwilling to embrace him as here.
It’s something the modern-set production emphasises. The Patient Grissel story, of a woman rewarded for unending subjugation to a husband’s will, is unpalatable today. And that’s the tradition the Duke draws on, with his deliberate drawing-out of Claudio’s escape to make it seem eventually more joyous.
Lucy Wilkinson’s set, steps leading from a gallery down, as to a prison-like main acting area, backed by a graffiti-strewn wall, suits Conquest’s production. The let-down is much of the acting, which repeatedly strains for meaning rather than trusting the verse-structure and language. Of course, blank recitation’s no good. But over-forcing gives the story an off-putting ‘let-me-explain’ feel. And there’s too much of that here.
Lucio: Alexander Caine.
Mistress Overdone/Mariana: Caroline Devlin.
Juliet/Provost: Lucy-Anne Holmes.
Pompey/Friar: Richard Kidd.
Escalus: Robert Lister.
Claudio/Elbow/Abhorson: Richard Neale.
Angelo: Adam Newsome.
Isabella: Amy Stacy.
Duke: Noel White.
Director: Charlotte Conquest.
Designer: Lucy Wilkinson.
Lighting: Ashley Bale.
Movement director: Aidan Treays.
Fight director: Jonathan Waller.
Assistant designer: Katherine Voirrey.
2008-04-01 11:43:09