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by William Shakespeare, directed Leon Rubin

Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford

August 13-September 24, 2005

“The Full Measure of a Dark Comedy“

The Stratford Festival has saved the best for last.  The final play to open at the Festival in 2005 is Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure” and it turns out to be the best Shakespeare production of the season.  Unlike Antoni Cimolino’s “As You Like It”, director Leon Rubin has not imposed a concept on the production that does not fully make sense of the play.  Unlike Richard Monette’s tired remount of “The Tempest” that plods sleepily along, this production is riveting from beginning to end.     

In the past Rubin has been guilty of directing productions like the globe-trotting “Pericles in 2003 or the bungee-jumping “Midsummer Night’s Dream” of 2004 where an imposed concept squelched any hope of nuanced acting.  Initially, when you enter the Tom Patterson Theatre and see what seems to be a stainless steel version of the Kit Kat Klub, you fear this will be another visually rich, verbally poor production.  Fortunately, once the Viennese vice squad clears out the whores and pimps mingling with the audience and the dancers who have been performing awkward acrobatic stunts, the production gets down to serious business.  From then on character, movement and staging derive from a deep, clear reading of the text.  In fact, phrases, ironies and subplots that didn’t quite make sense in earlier production do now due to Rubin’s close scrutiny of the play.  If only more directors at Stratford would take this approach.

The plot with its topics of political corruption, sexual harassment and religious fervor pitted against natural vice seems more relevant than ever.  Duke Vincentio has let the punishment of vice slip so far in Vienna that he claims he has been called away and appoints the strict, cold-blooded Angelo as his deputy to enforce the laws.  Vincentio, who remains in Vienna in disguise, thus wants to preserve his reputation while letting Angelo do his dirty work for him.  Immediately a problem arises.  Fornicators are to be given the death penalty.  Thus Claudio, betrothed but not married to Juliet who is pregnant by him, is to be hanged.  A friend Lucio finds Claudio’s sister Isabella, who is just about to take vows as a nun, and asks her to plead with Angelo for her brother’s life.  She does so only to have the suddenly smitten Angelo tell her he will pardon Claudio only if she sleeps with him.  As directed by Rubin, the twists and turns that follow will have you on the edge of your seat.

The young cast act with greater sense of ensemble and purpose than I have ever seen them do before.  Chief among them is Dana Green as Isabella.  Isabella is a person who hoped to retreat from the world.  Green shows how reluctantly she is forced back into it by Lucio.  Only goaded on by him can she find the arguments to present to Angelo.  But once Isabella finds a moral way of viewing the subject, Green shows how she gets caught up in the debate despite herself.  Green’s incandescent performance finds her on the verge of tears for much of the action, tears of anger, frustration, shame and joy.  She burns with an intensity that seems to raise everyone else to her level.

Jonathan Goad seems cast against type as Angelo.  Unlike his earlier appearances in Shakespeare he speaks the text clearly as verse not prose.  His Angelo’s stiff demeanour and concern for precisely arranging his desk mark him as a obsessive-compulsive.  When lust breaks out it is sudden and violent.  Goad still needs to learn how to act with his voice instead of forcing his face to do all the work.  At the end when Angelo is faced with one accusation after another, a suggestion of the thoughts that must be roiling in Angelo’s mind would make a greater impression than the general impassivity Goad displays.

Thom Marriott is an excellent choice for Vincentio but here Rubin has placed him in a bind.  Marriott, a fine speaker of Shakespearean verse, uses his full, deep voice as Vincentio.  The action being transferred to the present somewhere in eastern Europe, leaves him few options for his disguise as “Friar Lodowick”, especially since he is physically larger than most of the cast.  An old-fashioned monk’s garb and hood would have been the best option, but all designer John Pennoyer gives him is a dog-collar, sunglasses and a straw hat.  To compensate Marriott uses the higher register of his voice.  However, since Vincentio is in disguise more often than not, this leads to Marriott having to speak some of the most famous parts of the play in a false voice.  As the action progresses Marriott, in fact, frequently drops his “Lodowick” voice so that it is increasingly difficult to believe that no one recognizes him.  Under Rubin, Marriott shows how Vincentio himself gradually falls in love with Isabella, in careful preparation for his declaration at the end that in other productions seems to come out of nowhere.

Don Carrier gives a very fine performance as Lucio.  His Lucio is not a fool, but a good man who just accepts that human beings are naturally inclined to vice.  His spurring of Isabella on to action is his attempt to achieve justice and his attacks on Vincentio show he is aware of Vicentio’s hypocrisy whether his tales are true or not.  Because Carrier plays Lucio seriously Vicentio’s action towards him at the end looks like revenge.  In smaller roles Jeffrey Wetsch is impressive as the dejected Claudio, first accommodating himself to death then imploring his sister to commit a sin to save him, while Sarah Wilson is a glowing Mariana  

There are two senior Stratford actors in the cast.  Robert King tends to bluster as Vincentio’s secretary Escalus, but Diane D’Aquila is hilarious as the drink-sodden madam Mistress Overdone.  Her performance as the nun Francisca, however, is an embarrassing caricature of the aged.

For once the wholly comic characters don’t seem out of place in this dark play.  The limber Andrew Massingham is very funny as the tapster and pimp Pompey, who addresses members of the audience as his clients, as is Shane Carty as his bumbling nemesis, the dim-witted, malapropism-spouting constable Elbow.  Evan Stillwater makes a memorable appearance as the unrepentant bear-like prisoner Barnadine, who will die only when he sees fit.

 

Still, there are peculiarities.  Leon Rubin, an expert on Asian theatre, has designer John Pennoyer display a giant yin-yang symbol prominently beside the ducal throne even though the setting, according to Rubin’s notes, is supposed to be contemporary eastern Europe.  It’s jarring not just because of the updated setting but because the play’s ending contradicts the harmony the symbol represents.    Pennoyer’s costumes capture a modern Eastern European look, though Vincentio’s “Lodowick” disguise makes him look like a preacher from the American South, Elbow’s uniform makes him look like a New York cop and the camouflage outfits for the vice squad would better suit a South American dictatorship.  For a play constantly referring to darkness and shadows, Robert Thomson has strangely overlit the stage, even in the prison scenes.

Yet, these are quibbles.  What is most important is that Rubin and his cast have presented the play in such a clear way with such a firm grasp of the issues at stake.  It’s a compelling production that deserves to have a longer run than the short one allotted to it.  See it while you can.

Note:  With the production of “Measure for Measure” the Stratford Festival claims that the Festival has completed the entire Shakespeare canon of 38 plays under Richard Monette’s tenure.  This ignores the play “Edward III” which was accepted into the canon in 1998 when the authoritative Arden Shakespeare edition announced it would include the work in its new edition.  The Royal Shakespeare Company has since performed “Edward III” as by Shakespeare in its acclaimed “Jacobean season” of 2002-03.  I should think that what is good enough for Arden Shakespeare and the RSC should be good enough for the Stratford Festival of Canada.  If the Festival really wants to boast it has done all of Shakespeare under Monette, it had better stage an “Edward III”.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Dana Green, Jonathan Goad and Thom Marriott. ©David Hou.