The Stage

Measure for Measure

Published Friday 19 February 2010 at 11:10 by Susan Elkin

I’ve always regarded Measure for Measure as a play about a problem (or two or three) rather than a ‘problem play’ and Michael Attenborough, director of this thoughtful and briskly paced revival clearly takes the same line, although part of the problem, for all concerned, is that 21st century audiences find it difficult to relate to a girl who prizes her own virginity above her brother’s life.

Ben Miles (Vincentio) and Anna Maxwell Martin (Isabella) in Measure for Measure at the Almeida Theatre Photo: Keith Pattison

In the hands of the compellingly mercurial Anna Maxwell Martin - in her first major Shakespeare role - Isabella’s passionate, erotically charged arguments and outbursts of anger are punctuated with quiet moments of girlish nervousness. Gradually Maxwell Martin develops poise for Isabella, culminating in the withering gaze of incredulity with which she answers Vincentio’s clumsy proposal in Shakespeare’s rather tortuous denouement.

Ben Miles’s humourless Vincentio gets the manipulative, hand-wringing inadequacy just right and the idea of showing Angelo (Rory Kinnear) as seriously unhinged from the very beginning works well. The trouble with this is that Kinnear finds such humour in Angelo’s fumblings and longings that we almost lose sight of what a hypocritical monster he really is, although it is clearer in the second half. Lloyd Hutchison’s Irish, in your face Lucio is good value, David Killick brings even humoured gravitas and dignity to Escalus and Emum Elliott is movingly watchable as Claudio.

Lez Brotherston’s slick designs - gloomy brick walls, grilles and doorways - on variously angled flats are ingenious and effective, especially in the red light district scenes. The arresting opening, in which Vincentio is haunted by Amsterdam-type cavorting shop window girls is oddly against the grain of the text, however, because the fantasies are being assigned to the wrong character.