measure for measure in manchester and london

STANLEY WELLS 5

Measure for Measure in Manchester and London As a moral fable with an unhistorical setting. Measure for Measure has often been found appropriate for theatrical updating. Its concern with the rela- tionship between public responsibility and private morality, with the use an2 abuse of power, with the rival claims of justice and mercy, of sexual ful- filment and self-control, of secular and religious values, makes it relevant to any age or period. Some of the social roles of the participants - duke, friar, nun - are relatively timeless in their visual associations. Though the moral stance of Isabella, the girl who can say 'More than our brother is our chas- tity', has aroused incredulity in many modem readers and theatregoers, it is not difficult to think of societies since Shakespeare's time in which it would have occasioned no surprise. So it is understandable that the two most recent revivals, which opened within a few days of one another, both advance the action to the present century.

Braham Murray's production at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, is, as we should expect at a theatre in the round - or, more accurately, in the square - the less precisely located. Johanna Bryant creates an initial image of cruel repression in defining the playing area by a square of angled metal spikes such as might top a prison wall. The image extends to the convent, for the metal grille through which Isabella enters is used also for the prison scenes. Symbolism is evident too at the play's opening, in the crown which encircles the central overhanging light, and the ducal robes placed on a tailor's dummy. The action begins with a slow mime in which the Duke, wearing a simple garment, wearily assumes the ducal robes. It is a fitting image of the tension between the man and his office. As the plot unfolds it becomes evident that the Duke is conceived in terms of a modem Buddhist. In the third scene he squats, shaven-headed, with the man known in the text as Friar Thomas, as if to a guru. We are made highly conscious of the cares of responsibility, but the play's Christian terms of reference are reduced; the words 'friar' and 'father' are altered to 'brother'. Angelo and Escalus wear French legal gowns of indeterminate period. Angelo is tense, newly shaven, his hair somewhat thin but sleeked down as if fresh from the shower. Perhaps a kinky obsession with cleanliness is being suggested.

This all seems more or less modem, but the brothel of the following scene appears to be late Victorian. Fin-de-si2cIe Paris, it seems, is being substituted for Shakespeare's Vienna. The madame sits at a table on which an art- nouveau lamp casts its light on to a wrought-iron stand holding keys to,

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obviously, the private rooms. Beside her is a tall, languid in female COS-

tume. Lucio and his companions wear full evening dress, with opera cloaks and top hats. A decadent atmosphere is well and economically conveyed, but we ask ourselves whether it is sordid enough. The elegance is at odds with the language. These gentlemen seem too discreet in their amours to admit to having ’purchased many diseases’ under this roof, the proprietress too genteel to complain that, ’what with the war, what with the sweat, what with the gallows, and what with poverty’, she is ‘custom-shrunk’.

The same method of staging is sustained throughout the action. During blackouts between the scenes, properties suggestive of location are lowered from above or wheeled in from the sides. On the first night, at least, it was all rather disruptive of continuity. The punctuating darkness reduced the play‘s impetus.

As played by Clare Higgins, Isabella, dressed as a bride in her opening scene, has a cold, poised beauty. Outside the convent she wears black, a headband suggesting the Salvation Army. Her strengths are rhetorical, not pathetic; there is a touch of the suffragette about her; she lacks vulnerability. Christopher Neame successfully conveys Angelo’s self-righteousness and, initially, his horror at discovering his lustful impulses, but his soliloquies dis- integrate into generalised hysteria. Isabella, by contrast, is over-controlled. ‘To whom should I complain’ is cold and static, addressed to only one seg- ment of the audience. It is a virtue of the production that it avoids the excessive perambulation characteristic of performances ‘in the round’, but here some movement would have helped to involve us in Isabella’s plight.

Claudio (Richard Rees) has to play his prison scene in a large cage. Prowl- ing round it as the Duke, Alfred Burke- who tends in general to flatten verse into prose - does not retain full control over the rhetoric of his con- solatio, ‘Be absolute for death‘. The bulk of the speech consists of sentiments which the Duke adjures Claudio to address to life; here, they are spoken through the bars of the cage rather as the Duke’s own advice to Claudio. Claudio, understandably, is not consoled; he speaks‘Ay, but to die. . .’ with his head between the bars as an internal vision of horror; seated facing him as I was, I found it convincing and moving. Isabella’s uncomprehending anger is consistent with the actress’s characterisation

The figures of the sub-plot are vividly drawn. John Abineri as Pompey Bum suggests a seedy, elderly hotel porter. He is too matter-of-fact to sus- tain the full stream-of-consciousness effect of his defence of Froth (played by Colin Prockter as a foolish, frightened gentleman caught, literally, without his trousers), but a touch of Frankie Howerd helps to bring the character to life. His description of the prison (IV, iii) is shortened and paraphrased, with some verbal updating and direct address of the audience. The constable

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Elbow is played by Roy Sampson as a fervent Scottish moralist; again the actor borrows hints from a popular comedian, this time the stalking gait and barking delivery of John Cleese. Lucio is at home everywhere, in brothel, nunnery, prison, or ducal palace. He wears formal evening costume throughout the performance. This gives him something of the air of a ring- master, but sits ill with the superstitious way he talks of Angelo to the dis- guised Duke: ’Some report a sea-maid spawned him. Some that he was begot between two stock-fishes. But it is certain that when he makes water his urine is congealed ice.’ But Zia Mohyeddin brings an elegant poise to the role, making all his points with well-timed economy. Again, there are a few verbal changes Claudio, for example, is to die ’for filling a bottle with a fun- nel’ instead of Shakespeare’s ’tundish‘.

In the scene with Lucio (III.iii), Alfred Burke’sDuke confirms the impres- sion we have earlier received: that the actor is more successful at conveying the Duke’s personal responses to the situations in which he finds himself than at suggesting the additional, mysterious dimension that Shakespeare creates by making us constantly conscious of the interplay between the man and his personae as bothDuke and friar. The result is a secularisation of the role. This is a thoughtful man, a natural if puzzled philosopher, but there is little sense of a role player, an ironic observer.

The play’s final scene includes a number of underwritten moments to which the experienced playgoer looks forward with interest. How much internal struggle will Isabella reveal before acceding to Mariana’s request that she plead for Angelo’s life in face of the Duke’s insistence that ‘He dies for Claudio’s death’? This Isabella kneels swiftly, without hesitation, ever decisive. When the Claudio whom she believes to be dead is brought alive before her, Shakespeare gives no words to either of them. Here, their silent reunion is movingly represented Above all, we want to know how Isabella will respond to the Duke’s double proposal of marriage. Shakespeare gives her no verbal response to either. UntiLa few years ago it was conventional for her to acquiesce graciously and for the couple to leave the stage hand in hand. John Barton changed all that in his Stratford-upon-Avon production of 1970 in which Isabella seemed shocked by the Duke’s suggestion, and remained on stage at the end of the play, registering bewilderment while the disappointed Duke left with his retinue. Here, no very positive interpretation is offered; Isabella goes off with the Duke, but there is no physical con- tact between them.

The overall impact of this production is of an intelligent, worthy attempt to present the play in a way that is accessible to a modem audience without excessive adaptation. It does not plumb the depths of emotion of which the text is capable, but neither does it seriously misrepresent that text.


It was evident from the preliminary announcements that Michael Rudman's National Theatre production of the same play, in the Lyttelton auditorium, was to be no ordinary event. The Theatre did well to announce that it was to be 'set on a mythical Caribbean island shortly after the Second World Waf and to be 'played by a cast of mixed nationalities'. Purists were duly warned, and could stay away if they wished. I nearly did so myself, and am delighted that I did not.

The curtain rises on an elaborate set which is of great importance to the production. Throughout, there is to be a vivid pictorialism and a busy peo- pling of the stage such as would have gladdened the heart of Henry Irving or Beerbohm Tree. But it is not achieved at the expense of fluidity of action, for Eileen Diss's permanent set is highly flexible. Initially it represents a night club. Elegantly dressed black couples are dancing in a courtyard to soft music provided by white-coated on-stage musicians. Behind the dancers, in an open-fronted building, figures in evening dress are gambling we hear the croupier's calls. A tall man carrying a drink detaches himself from the gamblers, moves forward, and reclines with his feet up in a cane lounging- chair. The gamblers fade away and the dialogue begins; we realise with some surprise that this is the Duke. It seems an odd place for him to do his business with the white Escalus - a colonial administrator, we presume. The emphasis is placed not on the Duke's sense of responsibility, as at Manches- ter, but on that laxness in enforcing law of which he is later to speak. Angelo is older than in Manchester, a stocky, sombre figure in episcopal purple.

With the second scene the set opens up and erupts into the busy life of a market square. At each side is a loggia; behind the left one, a bead-curtained doorway with the sign 'Club Caribe'. Steps recede upwards to either side of the structure which forms the side of the square facing the audience. Part way up the steps on the right is the door of an establishment kept, a sign tells us, by 'Marie', who is visible in the open doorway. Higher still we see pa+ trees, telegraph wires, and the tops of churches in a receding skyline. The somewhat furtive brothel-talk ,of Manchester becomes here the extrovert ebullience of members of a sun-blessed community who live most of their lives in public places. Local colour abounds. Mistress Overdone, played by Bertice Reading, is a short but vast mother-figure. Growing accustomed to the unusual setting, we find that Shakespeare's lines flow easdy from the mouths of most of these actors, though there are occasional signs of strain. In particular, the Duke sounds elocutionary - the surface of his speech is well moulded, but at the expense of spontaneity. Accents are far from uniform: Lucio sounds Irish, Claudio is a black Geordie. Textual changes are slight: 'the suburbs of Vienna' becomes 'the suburbs of the nation', but references to Hungary and Poland are unaltered. At the end of the first act, Lucio sings


an interpolated song gloating over the increased fees available for whore- dom in the newly repressive society. It serves a recapitulatory function and is enjoyable in itself but leaves us wondering whether we are in for other similar offerings, as in Trevor Nunn’s Comedy of Errors. We are not; the production would be tighter if the song were omitted.

This Elbow - Ruddy L. Davis - is a little man, who makes himself felt not by stalking about, but by rising on his toes with each emphatic malapropism. Froth (Maitland Chandler) is a faded white of some gentility - exiled to the colonies, we deduce, for some ancient misdemeanour. Pompey is so confi- dent of his powers of ingratiation that he condescends to Escalus (Leslie Sands), cheekily sitting on his desk; but an inner ferocity is revealed to the audience by his indignant reaction to Escalus’s threat of a .whipping.

As the play becomes more intense, so does the acting. In the first of her scenes with Angelo, Isabella (Yvette Harris), like her northern counterpart, is rational rather than eloquently impassioned. She has a fine voice which rings out impressively on ‘Man, proud man. . .’, but there are false intona- tions. As Angelo, Norman Beaton treats her with sweet reasonableness; increasingly we realise that we are in the presence of a consummate actor who can command and sway the audience by his poise, dignity, and precise timing. He does everything by doing practically nothing; this is a pared- down performance whose few ‘points’ become correspondingly more pow- erful. The soliloquy that closes the scene-’What’s this? What’s this? . . .’ - is crisply spoken, with one bloodcurdling outburst as the cleric sees and denounces his own corruption. TheDuke’s subsequent scene with Juliet (Elizabeth Adare), played in public, is notable mainly for the girl’s depth of emotion on learning that Claudio ’must die tomorrow’.

In his second scene with Isabella, Angelo’s clerical status (emphasised, if not justified, by the adoption of Warburton’s long-abandoned emendation ’priestly’ for the Folio’s obscure ’prenzie’) helps to create the tone of abstract argument with which the scene initially proceeds, but personal emotion suddenly cracks the surface, and he kneels to Isabella on ’Plainly conceive, I love you’. On Isabella’s threat that she will ’tell the world I What man thou art‘ he rises and sustains a long, marvellously eloquent silent pause before the completely controlled ‘Who will believe thee, Isabel?’.

Isabella is full of confidence in Troy Foster‘s tough, tall Claudio. An important textual transposition occurs in his prison scene. His conversa- tion with Isabella, in which he expresses his fear of death, is played before, not after, he hears the Duke’s consolation. It is a crucial change, veer- ing the play’s tone in the direction of comedy. It is also a sentimentalisation.

Again, silence is powerfully used to suggest the working of emotion beneath the surface, this time before Claudio’s ‘Has he affections in him?’, as


his resolution to sacrifice himself in order to save Isabella’s honour begins to crack. ‘Ay, but to die. . . ’ here becomes not so much the expression of an internal vision as an attempt to impress Isabella with a sense of horror- conscious persuasion. In response, Isabella manages to convey hysteria without submerging the lines. If the Duke’s consolath seemed false after this, it was partly because Stephen Kalipha seemed badly afflicted by first-night nerves, but also because we had been deeply shaken by what came before.

The scene between Lucio (Peter Straker) and the Duke is played with Lucio on a balcony above the right-hand loggia, and theDuke-as-friar below him, in the market place. Though they are the only two who speak, it is here a very public scene, with the interesting effect that the ‘friar‘ comes to seem very much a scapegoat. Lucio whips up the populace’s indignation against him, as if he were personally responsible for the repression in the state - as, in a sense, he is. The crowds response is lively; Lucio’s gibe that Angelo’s ‘urine is congealed ice’ is greeted with raucous delight and much slapping of thighs. From a balcony, Escalus looks quietly on.

The interval is placed, as usual, at the end of Act Three. The Manchester Manana (Diana Katis) had been an oddly oriental figure: here, Angela Bruce plays her as a smartly dressed black girl, seated incongruously in a night club, where Mistress Overdone sings ’Take, 0 take those lips away’, accompany- ing herself on a piano. Isabella makes a silently eager, touchingly hopeful entry to learn of the plot to save her brother.

Oscar James’s Pompey comes into his own in the second prison scene, where his description of the prisoners is turned into a surprisingly successful calypso, with ‘All great doers in our trade’ as its refrain. But the prison is a place of suffering too. A soldier with a machine-gun sits atop the wall; prisoners in severe mental distress inhabit the yard. Barnardine (Mark Heath) - the only member of the cast to speak in the accents of an American nego - is a small, initially pathetic, shambling figure evidently in an advanced stage of alcoholism; he trembles all over, progressing by means of an oddly jumpy, dance-like shuffle. He kneels in respect to the ’friar‘ at first, but loses patience with him and manhandles him with unexpected ferocity. Isabella’s grief at hearing of Claudio’s supposed death is deeply felt; a little textual tinkering enables Lucio on his entrance to express immediate com- passion for her.

Elaborate preparations are made for the Duke‘s return. Angelo puts on military uniform, suggesting analogies with modem ecclesiastical politi- cians. Garlands, and banners bearing the Duke’s photograph, decorate the buildings. A carnival atmosphere is created; stallholders sell balloons - some of which float into the audience - posters, and postcards. The bustle freezes while Isabella and Mariana speak, resuming immediately afterwards. The


Duke, Escalus, and Angelo enter on top of the right-hand loggia, as if on to a platform; below them is the town band, ready to oblige when required. Lucio faces them, sitting comfortably on top of the left-hand loggia. The action is unfolded slowly, with great care. The populace takes a keen interest in everything that happens. It seems that the director is intent on making us observe the full moral implications of each turn of the action, even at the expense of a somewhat laboured effect. Angelo remains impassively calm in the face of Isabella’s accusations. Lucio descends to the market place for his denunciation of the supposed friar having plucked off his hood and rec- ognised him as the Duke he whirls round to face the audience with a hor- rified interpolated cry of ‘Jesus Christ!’, to irresistibly comic effect. He races off up the steps, pursued by soldiers in a comic chase.

Left to right, Bertice Reading as Mistress Overdone, Angela Bruce as Mariana, Stefan Kalifa as the Duke and Yvette Hams as Isabella inMeasure forMeasure at the Lyttleton Theatre, London.


Angelo’s enforced mamage to Manana takes place within our view, in the left-hand loggia, while the Duke is addressing Isabella. The Duke’s state- ment that Angelo will die for Claudio’s death - ‘An Angelo for Claudio, death for death!’ is taken up by the crowd, who repeat ’death for death’ in angry unison, but Isabella does not hesitate to ask for Angelo’s forgiveness. Barnardine, entering with the muffled Claudio, is in a state of abject terror; after his pardon, a friar congratulates him. When Claudio is revealed, Isabella embraces him with incredulous happiness. The Duke is back on the upper level now; she kneels, almost prostrate with gratitude, and sustains a long silence after the Duke’s

If he be like your brother, for his sake Is he pardoned, and for your lovely sake, Give me your hand and say you will be mine.

How will she react? For a moment we are kept wondering. But then girlish glee glints in her eyes, she rises, dashes up the steps, and embraces theDuke while the crowd registers its delight and the band bursts into a celebratory march. Clearly, we are all set for the happiest ending the play has ever had. The ’punk‘ whom Lucio is compelled to marry is Mistress Overdone; again, the ceremony takes place on stage, this time to the accompaniment of calyp- sos. There is another freeze for the Duke’s second proposal- ’I have a motion much imports your good’ - then a musical finale in which joy is unconfined.

Obviously, this Measure for Measure was in various ways a more conscious adaptation of the play than the Manchester version. At the same time, it was a serious exploration of the text. Some of the ways in which it departed from tradition were entirely legitimate. Others required textual tinkering. The resulting play may be more sentimental, and happier, than that suggested by the script that has come down to us, but in its own terms it worked. This is not to say that the acting was uniformly excellent, or that the staging was without its clumsinesses. But I came out of the theatre with a rare elation, feeling that I had seen an exceptionally thoughtful production, that Norman Beaton’s Angelo was one of the finest pieces of classical acting that I have ever witnessed, that the director‘s emphasis on the public aspects of the play had revealed new interpretative possibilities which could properly be used even by directors with a more conservative approach, and that the happy ending, even if it pushed interpretation into adaptation, was a marvellously joyful piece of theatre.

measure for measure in manchester and london

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