THE DEVIL'S LAW CASE by John Webster. White Bear to 27 January.

London

THE DEVIL'S LAW-CASE, or, WHEN WOMEN GO TO LAW, THE DEVIL IS FULL OF BUSINESS
by John Webster

Instant Classics Theatre Company at The White Bear Theatre To 27 January 2002
Runs 1hr 55min One interval.

TICKETS 020 7793 9193
Review Timothy Ramsden 6 January

A rare outing for this Jacobean bad boy's comedy, intriguing even in a rough-edged productionA lugubrious youth crops up during the film Shakespeare in Love, playing with rats and peeping through holes in walls. This sinister young voyeur introduces himself as John Webster, who grew up to write two of the immediate post-Shakespearean theatre's most coldly brilliant tragedies, The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi.

In The Devil's Law Case Webster saturates himself in middle-class, not courtly, Italy and as his sub-title suggests, the story is bourgeois comedy rather than aristocratic tragedy. Though, this being Webster, comedy is like a supposedly playful swipe across the face.

A rival lovers' duel ends with both being slain. Then reviving. One is assassinated as he recovers. But the assassination attempt only helps cure his first wound. All respectable society is here, to be mocked and shown as hypocritical – Nuns, Doctors, Lawyers all have their scenes in the dock of Webster's derision.

But it's the money-man Romelio who fascinates the author. His coolly determined villainy in the aid of self-advancement casts light on Flamineo and Bosola, self-conscious engines of lordly dastardy in The White Devil and Duchess of Malfi. By his will and ingenuity he achieves a dramatic status the mean venality and pale innocence of other characters never approaches.

David Cottis moves the action to a high-point of British bourgeois security, in 1891. Between scenes merry Gilbert and Sullivan's tunes lighten the mood. It's a setting that makes social relations clearer and provides an ironic contrast between Renaissance passion – Italy as England imagined it –and Victorian progress – England as its middle-class liked to imagine itself.

A young cast cannot manage all the gradations of age and the verse speaking, while clear, is often awkward. You can change period and location, but the language retains its demands, which are nowhere near fully met in terms of phrasing and tone.

So, more experienced companies might do the play better. But, apart from one revival each in York and Bristol over the past thirty years, no-one else has even tried.

Julio/Surgeon: Matthew Lyon
Romelio: Leon Felgate
Contarino: Matt Jamie
Leonora: Katerina Jugati
Jolenta: Laura Donaghey
Ercole: Graeme Sanders
Winifred: Nicola Marsland
Crispiano: Tom Sambrook
Sanitonella/Capuchin Friar: Bryn Locker-Jones
Contilupa/Nun: Caroline Oakes
Angiolella/Surgeon: Josephine Myddelton

Director: David Cottis
Designer: Christine Osborne
Lighting: Richard Williamson
Sound: Peter Russell
Fight director: Jonathan Hartman

2002-01-25 15:56:22