THE DUCHESS OF MALFI to 6 April
Salisbury
THE DUCHESS OF MALFI
by John Webster.
Salisbury Playhouse, to 6 April 2002
Runs 2hr 50 min One interval
TICKETS 01722 320333
Review Mark Courtice 15 March
A cool modern production takes up Webster’s Jacobean challenge.
Despite a plot that is sheer melodrama, with its mad brothers, pure Duchess heroine, bloody and cruel dumb shows, poisoned bibles, and chorus of mad men, at the centre of this play are good people destroyed when their rulers are entirely without moral compass. This makes Webster’s play important to modern audiences in its hatred of evil, even as it exhilarates with its thoroughly Jacobean enthusiasm for blood.
As Webster’s rough poetry wildly spills love, lust, ambition, and corruption across the stage, the challenge of the play is not to end up with a sub slasher-film gore fest. This production speeds along, judicious cutting losing some of the wilder excesses. Given there is a body count of nine by the end it is good to see a company of 14 actors - is this the extra money for regional theatre from the Arts Council making a difference?
Joanna Read takes a spare, minimal, modern approach to what could so easily be fustian. This means more humour than you might expect as the production occasionally risks laughter at the wrong moments and generally gets away with it. The performances are contemporary, cool, with lots of “grisly chic”. Initially, Lou Gish has something of a young Margaret Thatcher; the determined bossiness of her wooing of Antonio is replaced by dignity and humility at the grim tragedy of her death.
Stephen Finegold is excellent as he invests Antonio with real decency destroyed in confusion and terror. Alan Cox is better with dispossessed soldier of fortune Bosola’s cynicism than he is with his toughness. John McAndrew succeeds in making mad brother Duke Ferdinand horrific as well as grotesque.
Nancy Surman’s setting is a long floor of flagstones reaching right into the auditorium, from under which bleached bones tumble; this austerity makes the sylvan images in the poetry seem like longings for a better place. Hanging above and behind are gauzes, rich curtains, and projections of classical pictures. Set and costumes and sensibility are 21st Century Tudor - the vaguely period music has feedback squealing through it - reinforcing a modern take on old horrors.
Delio: Faz Singhateh
Antonio: Stephen Finegold
Bosola: Alan Cox
Cardinal: Jason Morell
Ferdinand: John McAndrew
Grisolan: Jamie Ballard
Castruchio: Tim Meats
Roderigo: Asa Cannell
Pescara: Simeon Truby
Cariola: Wendy Baxter
Duchess: Lou Gish
Cardinal’s Servant: Sean Buckley
Malfi Servant: Alex Kennedy
Children: Bertie Evans, Francesca Holland, Gavin Johnson, Iona Johnson, Jamie Fulford, Catrin Southgate
Director: Joanna Read
Designer: Nancy Surman
Lighting: Jim Simmons
Music: Ollie Fox
Sound: Diane Prentice
Fight director: Richard Ryan
Assistant director: Douglas Rintoul
2002-03-20 13:04:43