“With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again,” said Christ in The Sermon on the Mount and with Measure for Measure Shakespeare was in a Shavian mood for a theatrical debate about morality.

He mixes melodrama and some dark comedy and then sets it in far away Vienna to stress that it is the morality of the story that interests him, though the sinners and vices portrayed in the play of this sinful city are purely Elizabethan English.

But you wouldn’t really know it from this seemingly sinless city which has exiled Pompey Bum, Froth and Elbow and reduces Mistress Overdone to just another meths drinker [More]

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The ‘human capacity for contradictions’ lies at the heart of Hilary Penwarden’s production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure on at BATS Theatre this week. The play itself is contradictory in nature, defying genre. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio, it is typically referred to now as a ‘problem play’ due to the many speeches about death and an uncomfortable ending; yes, it ends with marriage but also with forgiveness and reconciliation. For almost a century this ‘problem play’ was rarely performed; but due to its contemporary social themes of sex, power, and corruption, it is now one of the most popular and frequently performed Shakespeare plays. 

Drawn to these themes, Penwarden has assembled a talented cast for an intelligent production. A lot of the actors double roles, and they work very well together as a tight ensemble who have a strong command of the language in the play. James Cain, as Angelo, in particular captures the beautiful eloquence of the verse.  

Cuts have been made and roles combined (Lucio and Pompey are merged) to make the play fit nicely into a 2-hour running time. I’m surprised at how well these bold cuts work.  What is lost for me (perhaps due in part to the condensation) is a larger political landscape of Vienna and an impression of it as a place. This is often key to productions of Measure for Measure. I feel some sense of the darkness of this world is fundamental to understanding any interpretation of the play.

Though I miss an evocation of the world of Vienna and the lack of a formal comic subplot with Elbow, the Dogberry-like constable, this production hits the mark with dark comedy. Hayden Frost as Lucio (with strokes of Pompey) has impeccable comic timing and works wit like a charm. I also enjoy the metatheatrical humour David Lawrence draws from Duke Vicentio’s play-acting of Friar Lodowick. I always feel the Duke must have moments of relishing his disguise, and Lawrence does this well. He also excels at connecting with the audience, and I love the moment in the final act when he points to a man in the audience as a potential “better husband” for Mariana than her Angelo.

Other memorable bits of comic business include the severed stand-in head for Claudio. In one scene, it is dumped casually on Angelo’s table in a plastic shopping bag and met with huge audience laughter at the grotesqueness. I laugh, but then realise it is a pretty poignant metaphor for human life as commodity. 

The great virtue of this production is that it makes me think, a lot, and as a director /lecturer /researcher of Shakespeare I’m coming to this production having already done a lot of thinking on this play. It’s the first time I’ve noticed the connection between the ‘coldness’ of Angelo that is so oft referred to and repeated in the play and the word ‘justice’ or ‘just/ice’.

Both Escalus and the Provost – played brilliantly by Fiona McNamara and Keagan Carr Fransch respectively – are female. This was a clever interpretive choice, hinting at the injustice of women passed over for higher positions of leadership. What would a female-ruled Vienna look like (i.e. if the Duke had chosen Escalus as proxy rather than Angelo) is a very interesting question indeed.

What I wanted from this production was some of these thought-provoking choices to be pushed further/deeper and translate into feeling. For me, this was the contradiction within the production—too much intellect, too little heart. The stakes were not high or played high enough, and they are meant to be life or death, heaven or hell.

For example, I leave the production unclear about the value to Isabella of her virginity or life choices. Usually one of the most moving in the play, the scene between Isabella (Ania Upstill) and her brother Claudio (Andrew Goddard) in prison – and it’s the only one they get—conveys little emotion or connection between the performers. Why is she not torn apart here? To this end, the reveals and climaxes of 5.1 hardly feel like high points at all – especially Isabella’s kneeling for Angelo. No one seems very hurt or heartbroken here, and none of the choices seem hard.  

Finally, the moment I find most jarring is Isabella’s reaction to the Duke’s marriage proposal at the end of the play. In Shakespeare’s play, Isabella does not respond to the Duke’s proposal. Many recent and feminist productions of the play have used her silence to indicate a reluctance or resistance to the patriarchal systems in place in Vienna. Is the Duke’s proposal just another male attempting to dominate Isabella, who has, after all, committed herself to life as a nun? Here Isabella exchanges her rosary for a wedding ring and smoothly accepts the Duke’s proposal.

Isabella’s acceptance of the Duke is a completely valid choice and probably more in line with Early Modern thinking, but nowhere in this production has the choice been seeded. Here the proposal is meet with awkward audience laughter. Two lines belonging to the Duke are also given to Isabella in order to provide her with a verbal response to his offer.

Juliet Stevenson, who played Isabella for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1983, said of the silence in the text, “But you know, there isn’t a fixed end to a play. The script ends. The words run out. But the ending–that’s something that has to be renegotiated every performance.”  I wanted an earned ending, one that sustained the speechless dialect between Isabella and the Duke as is in the text. It’s a problem play, but not one that necessarily needs solving by reassigning lines. Ambiguity would have been much more powerful. 

Still, what a brave, ambitious choice to tackle this play as a young director. I really appreciate the care that went into this production (i.e. even adding a trigger warning for sexual violence – often something that is missing from productions of Measure for Measure). Get to BATS this week to see Shakespeare’s great piece about the abuse of power artfully staged with thought and integrity.

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