The Stage

Measure for Measure

Published Wednesday 9 June 2004 at 17:10 by Susan Elkin

Sinister sets, growling music - by Gerard McBurney - mostly in minor keys, running menacingly under the words like aural lighting, seamless scene changes, imaginative use of video screens and telephones and some startling performances make this fresh, innovative, thoughtful Measure for Measure one of the best of recent years.

Plastic-faced Paul Rhys’s Angelo is a deeply anguished psychotic to whom no right-minded person would entrust a dog, let alone a province. It throws the misjudgement of the Duke (David Troughton) into unusual clarity. He seems - a key word in this play - to be a damaged and disabled old man before reinventing himself as the eavesdropping, revoltingly manipulative friar.

In a play about raw sex and punishment, probably the nastiest prospect in this version is the fresh faced Isabella - played by Naomi Frederick as a sweet voiced, tight lipped sixth former until she forgets herself and is overcome with rampant passion - succumbing at the end to the autocratic and lascivious Duke old enough to be her grandfather.

Measure for Measure’s ‘problem’ is that it can’t decide whether it’s a (near) tragedy or a comedy. McBurney has two solutions. First he jettisons the interval which gives the play cohesion and stops the last two acts feeling like the usual uneasy romp to the denouement after the intensity of the first half. Second, although he worksthe tragic emotion for all its worth, he also exploits every ounce of comedy so the balance, for once, feels right. The ‘trying’ of Pompey (Richard Katz) and Froth (Clive Mendus) is hilarious. The Provost (Angus Wright) becomes, at times, farcical in the best sense. But the funniest joke of the evening is to flash up George W Bush’s face as Lucio (Toby Jones) condemns ‘the sanctimonious pirate.’