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by John Webster, directed by Peter Hinton

Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford

June 2-September 23, 2006

“Oh Direful Misprision!”

The Stratford Festival’s current production of “The Duchess of Malfi” is one of the most egregious examples I’ve ever seen of a directorial “concept” so ruthlessly applied that it destroys the play it is meant to interpret.  Director Peter Hinton created a wonderful version of Sondheim’s musical “Into the Woods” last year, but this year his unrelenting insistence on the darkness of John Webster’s great Jacobean tragedy makes the play often literally unwatchable.

John Webster (1578-1634?) is one of Shakespeare’s greatest contemporaries whose existential vision and brilliant, complex poetry only began to be appreciated in the 20th century, most notably by T.S. Eliot.  “The Duchess of Malfi” deserves to be set alongside “King Lear” as a play articulating one of the bleakest world views of the Jacobean period, and, as such, a world view not unlike our own. 

In the play the nameless, widowed Duchess of Malfi (a contemporary misunderstanding of the Italian “Amalfi”) is threatened by her two brothers Ferdinand and the nameless Cardinal with punishment should she remarry.  The motive for the mentally unstable Ferdinand seems to be his unacknowledged incestuous desire for the Duchess, who is also his twin, that gradually destroys what little hold he has on reason.  The motive for the Cardinal is nominally the notion that a second marriage for a widow is licentious, a fairly hypocritical view since his own mistress is another man’s wife.  In reality, it is more likely he fears loss of control over his sister’s property.  Whether out of love or recklessly to spite her brothers, the Duchess secretly marries her steward Antonio and has three children by him.  Ferdinand hires the known villain Bosola to spy on the Duchess and eventually to oversee her capture, imprisonment, torture and death.  The Duchess’s stoic fortitude in suffering so impresses Bosola with the injustice of her treatment, however, that he vows to avenge her death.

This is a dark, nightmarish tale involving torture, madness, lycanthropy and severed body parts.  There is no “providence that shapes our ends” as suggested in “Hamlet” but rather an uncaring and even malevolent world order where even attempts to do good can cause evil and whose nature is epitomized by one of the greatest symbols in 17th-century drama, the Cardinal’s poisoned Bible.

To create this world on stage Hinton has had lighting designer Bonnie Beecher keep the lighting levels as low as possible.  Scenes are often lit by only a few squares of brilliant light that cast everyone outside them into shadow.  Several scenes are lit solely by pierced lanterns that cast beautiful flickering patterns but make it impossible to see anything on stage.  As if this were not enough, some scene are in fact played out in total darkness. There were conventions for suggesting nighttime in the 17th century but total blackouts were not among them.

To add to the visual difficulties, Hinton has had designer Carolyn M. Smith make all the costumes, except for the Cardinal’s, of exactly the same black linen.  Actors are frequently covered from just below the jaw to foot in black.  Add to this pancake makeup with the upper and lower eyelids completely blacked to make the actors look like live corpses plus extravagant hairstyles, some as for Ferdinand and Julia rising straight up a foot or more, and the faces of the actors even when there is light are often cast in shadow. 

And then, just to make the experience more unpleasant, Hinton has had Peter Hannan compose an almost continuous soundscape of New Agey Renaissance music played at so loud a volume that it obscures the actors’ words.  Thus, in imposing his vision of the play, Hinton has created a theatrical experience where we can neither see nor hear the actors properly.  It’s a ridiculous spectacle of directorial monomania.

Hinton has focussed so much attention on how the play should look and sound that he seems to have given none to how the actors should interpret the text or their characters.  Lucy Peacock might make a good Duchess but she is so unalterably affected and haughty from first to last that we feel nothing for her or her sufferings.  Shane Carty may have a resonant voice but he is so insipid as Antonio it is impossible to understand why the Duchess would risk her life by allying herself to him.

Paul Essiembre has the plum role of Ferdinand, but rather than showing how the Duchess’s twin gradually descends into madness during the play, Hinton has Essiembre play Ferdinand as fully mad right from the start, roaring and snarling out his words with such vehemence they are incomprehensible.  Hinton takes Ferdinand’s lycanthropy literally instead of metaphorically and so has him howl like a dog, crawl on all fours and growl.  In this way such key moments as Ferdinand’s contemplation of his dead sister-- “Cover her face.  Mine eyes dazzle”--are simply thrown away.  As the Cardinal, the Duchess’s seemingly more rational brother, Peter Donaldson never summons up the icy menace that should fill us with fear.  Scott Wentworth could make a fine Bosola and shows well how this hired villain begins to abhor his task and to admire the Duchess’s strength of spirit.  The main problem, as with most of the actors, is that he races through his lines as if under some time constraint, though if staying under three hours were a problem, why does Hinton so unnecessarily interpolate bedlam scenes from another play, Dekker’s “The Honest Whore”, which do nothing to move the action forward?

Among the women, Laura Condlln as the Duchess’s maid Cariola speaks in a flat tone and fails to capture mixture of the horror and farce in Cariola’s ignoble death.  Karen Robinson plays Julia, the Cardinal’s mistress, as if she were a character in some sort of urbane comedy instead of in a Jacobean tragedy.         

Stratford’s only previous production of “The Duchess of Malfi” in 1971 was one of the company’s greatest critical and popular successes.  People old enough to have seen it still rave about Jean Gascon’s direction, Desmond Heeley’s fantastic design, Pat Galloway as the Duchess, Rowland Hewgill as Ferdinand, Barry MacGregor as Antonio, William Needles as the Cardinal and Powys Thomas as Bosola.  After so long a wait for a second production of this masterpiece, it is frustrating beyond belief to see it ruined by directorial folly.  Hinton may have wanted to create a nightmare and he has.  It is a production so misguided, so literally unwatchable and inaudible and therefore so tedious, you can’t wait for it to end.       

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Lucy Peacock as the Duchess of Malfi. ©David Hou.