Photos – Prudence UptonDecapitation, rape, incensed incest and abuse of political power are given some measure in Cheek by Jowl’s co-production with Pushkin Theatre Moscow of William Shakespeare’s Measure For Measure.
However, the more violent and salacious aspects are served as a jigger rather than a slug in this piquant punch of moral hypocrisy and gender power play.
The short fall of the show is the loss of Shakespeare’s language, the Russian translation distracting to the ear and to the eye by the focus pulling surtitles, so the play must find its measure in staging, design and performance, and, for the most part, these elements succeed in picking up the loss of the linguistics.
This production begins in silent flurry of all thirteen cast members creating a flash mob that cleverly illustrates the flock mentality of the proletariat and the sheer lack of shepherding drive the Duke derives from his constituency.
The Duke abrogates his rule, deputising Angelo to rein in the debauchery that seems to have besieged the city. Incommunicado and incognito as a hooded friar, he stays in town to watch how his deputy fares.
Instantly, the deputy becomes a despot, dispenser of Draconian law, condemning a man to death for fornication. Claudio guilty of anticipating the privileges of marriage has a sister, a novice nun, Isabel, who makes her intercessions to Angelo. This beautiful and innocent woman is made an offer by the tyrannical official, a choice between yielding her honour or condemning her brother.
Angelo, horrible hypocrite, punitive of other people’s pleasures, violator of virgins, and the personification of Victorian furniture fetishism – fondling bare chair legs and sniffing seats – is played with perfect petit bourgeois petty bureaucracy pitch by Andrei Kuzichev.
Novice nun Isabel is played by Anna Khalilulina with feisty vigour, a couple of times leaping on a table top in passionate petition, more bang than wimple as she rages against Angelo's verdict and dictates.
The Duke is played with a more benign duplicity by Alexander Arsentyev, a cleverer conniver than Angelo, but tarred with the same self gratifying streak and hankering for the habit.
Comic relief is retained in the character of Lucio with a ramp up the camp performance by Alexander Feklistov, while Mistress Overdone is underdone, and Elbow and Froth made invisible.
The focus is firmly on the triangle of The Duke, Angelo and Isabel.
Nick Ormerod’s set of red square boxes, stolid and opaque for most of the play, turn into cells of startling still life on occasion, providing a montage that effectively and economically short hands the narrative
Declan Donnellan keeps the pace with the ensemble racing about in the theatrical equivalent of the flash pan to facilitate scene change.
Certainly not Shakespeare as you normally hear it, Measure For Measure still has the Bard at its beating heart with ideas of mercy tempering justice, corruption scaled and the abused advantaged.
2017 Sydney Festival
Cheek By Jowl and Pushkin Theatre
Measure for Measure
by William Shakespeare
Director Declan Donnellan
Venue: Roslyn Packer Theatre Walsh Bay | 22 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay NSW
Dates: 7 – 11 January 2017
Tickets: $110 – $36
Bookings: www.sydneyfestival.org.au
