Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
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by William Shakespeare, directed by Graham Abbey
Groundling Theatre Company, Winter Garden Theatre, Toronto
January 28-February 19, 2017
Angelo: “Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true”
The Groundling Theatre Company is currently giving Toronto a taste of Shakespeare, so associated here with summer, in the depths of winter. It is presenting a revival of its production of The Winter’s Tale, first mounted at the Coal Mine Theatre last year, in repertory with a new production of Measure for Measure. The fine company comprises actors from both the Shaw and Stratford Festivals and the plays are performed on a polygonal platform before an audience of only 159 seated arranged in an arc on the stage of the Winter Garden Theatre. Both productions directed by Graham Abbey have flaws in conception, but for Shakespeare in an intimate setting you can’t do any better.
Abbey has given each play a concept which neither plays needs and which does not increase our understanding of either play. For Measure for Measure, Abbey’s twist is to set it in the present and make Shakespeare Duke Vincentio a duchess. Theoretically, there is nothing wrong with this as long as it is handled well, but I kept wondering as the action unfolded how Abbey was planning to make the ending work. Unfortunately, Abbey did nothing to make the ending work. Abbey allowed the already morally dubious ending to become, without any preparation, simply improbable.
Duke Vincentio, ruler of Vienna, is an ambiguous character in Shakespeare’s play. He has let slip the strict enforcement of a moral code that bans sexual relations before marriage for 19 years and now wants to have it enforced again. His plan is disappear from public life for a while and have his deputy Angelo serve in his place. Angelo, known to be so cold and rigid that his “blood is very snow-broth”, is given the task of enforcing the old moral code. The Duke knows that Angelo will receive the flak for it and thus will allow the Duke to return to Vienna untainted.
At the same time, the Duke, disguised as a monk, does not leave the city but lurks about to learn what the common people’s opinion is of him. In so doing he finds that Angelo’s enforcement of that law has as its test case where the man of an affianced couple who have had sex before marriage, his wife now pregnant, has been arrested and condemned to death for his crime.
The Duke discovers the injustice not only in this but is Angelo himself. The young man’s sister, Isabella, on the verge of entering holy orders, has been persuaded to plead with Angelo for her brother Claudio’s life. After their first meeting Angelo says that he will free Claudio if Isabella agrees to sleep with him. She abhors the idea and the Duke overhears her tells her brother so. But the Duke arranges a plot whereby Isabella can consent and a substitute take Isabella’s place.
Angelo, villain that he is, does not grant a stay of Claudio’s execution after his night with the supposed Isabella, and the Duke arranges a plot to save Claudio’s life. Unkindly, though, he wishes Isabella not to know this so that she will be more amazed when he tells her of it later. At the very end of the play the Duke asks Isabella to marry him, completely ignoring her first desire to enter a convent and devote herself to religion. The comedy’s ending can thus not really be considered “happy” especially for Isabella.
Even when staging Shakespeare’s original play, a good director has to make us aware earlier in the action of the Duke’s deviousness and of how he is smitten with Isabella so that the marriage proposal at the ending does arrive out of thin air. By changing Duke Vincentio into a character Abbey calls merely The Duchess, it is even more vital to establish the Duchess’s nature and Isabella’s before the final scene.
Abbey, however, does nothing. He has Lucy Peacock, who plays The Duchess, give us no sign whatsoever that she is helping Isabella for any other reason than to do a good deed. Abbey rarely has the two even near each other until the end to give us any sign that The Duchess is enamoured of Isabella. Lucio raises The Duchess’s ire by claiming that The Duchess “had some feeling of the sport” to which The Duchess replies “I never heard the absent duke much detected for women; [s]he was not inclined that way” and Lucio retorts, “O, [ma’am], you are deceived”. These are the sole lines that support Abbey’s concept, which needs greater emphasis if it is to work.
At the very end when The Duchess tells Isabella, “Dear Isabel, /
I have a motion much imports your good; / Whereto if you'll a willing ear incline, / What's mine is yours and what is yours is mine”. Abbey has The Duchess briefly hold onto Isabella’s fingers and give her a significant look before exiting. This is all very well, except that Abbey then has Isabella with much regret take off the cross she has been wearing since the beginning and gently place it on The Duchess’s chair. Given that the play has been set in the present and given all we have seen, this action makes no sense.
The Duchess has said “if you'll a willing ear incline”, but Abbey has given us no evidence that Isabella would be willing. Since we are in the present, she need not do what the ruler suggests since it is not even a command. From how Abbey has directed the play thus far, it would make much more sense to leave us with an Isabella, who is dumb-founded by what she has just heard and who clutches her crucifix to her rather than removes it. To make Isabella seem to comply with The Duchess’s request means that she is “willing” and that there is more about her sexual orientation than we know. If that is so, she can hardly be both willing and regretful at the same time.
It is a great pity that Abbey should allow this point to confuse the ending, because the play has been very strong up util then. Lucy Peacock makes an excellent Duchess and in her nun’s habit wearing glasses she even looks more “fantastical” than wise which perfectly suits what we hear about her. Peacock certainly could have made her interest in Isabella clear if she had been so directed. Peacock makes the Duke’s attempt to stage-manage the ending seem so strenuous that we see how much she is striving for effect and self-aggrandizement.
Tom McCamus is the strongest Angelo I have seen since Stratford’s production in 1992. With his hair neatly cut and combed, his posture slightly stooped and all is actions slow and deliberate, McCamus’s Angelo looks like Donald Rumsfeld and gives the impression of a pedantic schoolmaster. McCamus gives him a case of OCD by his constant rearranging of his office furniture. His attack of lust comes like a virus that to his horror rapidly spreads within him without his ability to control it. His is the first Angelo in years who fully lives up to the personal iciness he is said to have and who believably would still condemn Claudio after his night of passion with the supposed Isabella.
Michelle Giroux is very convincing as Isabella. She conveys the novice’s inexperience in pleading for her brother’s life and wonderfully shows how Isabella warms to her theme once she sees the logic of her argument. Giroux makes Isabella appear disoriented and vulnerable ever since Lucio urged her to become involved in Claudio’s case. As Shakespeare has written it, Isabella is nearly as icy as Angelo so it is very difficult to believe she would follow The Duchess’s invitation of marriage willingly. Giroux communicates this coldness, especially in the scene with Claudio in prison, and gives us no sign of an affinity for either women or men. As Giroux play it, up until the ending, Isabella’s greatest love is for the calm and seclusion that a convent would supply.
Charlie Gallant is a fine Claudio who gives us the feeling of the unfairness that such a kind, vital young man should be executed for loving his future wife. Gallant shows Claudio so weighed down with sadness that it appears desperate not comic when he wishes Isabella to consent to Angelo’s cruel conditions.
Under Abbey’s direction several minor characters shine and help give life to the conflicted world of Shakespeare’s Vienna. Patrick Galligan’s Escalus and Abhorson are day and night. His Escalus shows us what rectitude infused with humanity looks like. His Abhorson is very nearly a demon in human disguise. Mark Crawford has the single most comic turn in the entire play as the constable Elbow. He speaks his malapropisms so emphatically it is laugh-out-loud funny as is his dedication to doing his duty even it it means letting things be just as they are. As the recalcitrant prisoner Barnardine he embodies exactly the irreligious force of nature that Shakespeare imagined.
Steven Sutcliffe accomplishes a major feat by making Pompey a memorable character. Directors usually don’t know quite what to do with this character, but Abbey usefully has Pompey connect the two themes of the play of sex and death by emphasizing how he moves from bawd to assistant executioner. And for the first time I can recall, Pompey turns out to be quite a comic character, a meek but amoral man and an unlikely candidate for either of his two professions.
Karen Robinson clearly distinguishes Mistress Overdone from Mariana by making the first overdone in every sense of the word aided by designer Jenna McCutchen’s bizarre outfit. Her Mariana, in contrast, is calm and full of resignation. Robinson sings “Take, O, take those lips away”, beautifully scored by George Meanwell, with great feeling.
With a bit more thinking through of his main concept, Abbey could have made this Measure for Measure much more effective. Made up of so many private conversations, it is a play that well suits an intimate setting. Classic plays don’t need concepts imposed on them to be valid. Angelo’s comment to Isabella, “Say what you can, my false o’erweighs your true”, is chilling enough in today’s political climate.
Abbey is best at drawing out committed performances from seasoned actors, so let him focus on that in Groundling’s next offerings and all should be well. Let’s also hope that Groundling ventures into the world of Shakespeare’s contemporaries since there is so much Shakespeare in Ontario every year and so little of the others. Besides this, pairing Shakespeare with one of his contemporaries can illuminate both works.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Lucy Peacock and Michelle Giroux; Sarena Parmar, Lucy Peacock, Roy Lewis, Charlie Gallant, Tom McCamus, Michelle Giroux and Mark Crawford; Charlie Gallant and Lucy Peacock. ©2017 Groundling Theatre Company.
For tickets, visit http://groundlingtheatre.com.
2017-02-03
Measure for Measure