WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH ISABELLA?
MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Directed by Jeri Pitcher; written by William Shakespeare; scenic design by
Chez Cherry; costumes designed by Clinton O’Dell
With: R. Chris Reeder, Mark S. Cartier, Chris O’Carroll, Dustin Tucker,
Dennis Price, J. Paul Guimont, Patrick Pope, Anna Soloway, and Marcy Amell
Performed in repertory at the Theater at Monmouth in Monmouth, Maine
From August 4 to August 23, 2007
Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves
“They
say, best men are moulded out of faults, And, for the most, become much more
the better For being a little bad.”
—Mariana,
Measure for Measure
Shakespeare’s plays are often divided into three categories—comedies,
tragedies, and histories. (Then there are the “problem plays,” but we won’t
get into those right now.) The tragedies and histories are fairly easy to
identify, although it could be argued that some of the histories come
perilously close to being tragedies. Still, audiences know what they’re
getting when they go see a play such as Romeo and Juliet or Henry
V. They have certain expectations, and unless the production goes too
far off the mark (directors are notorious for messing with Shakespeare),
those expectations are fulfilled. Oddly enough, with the comedies it is
quite another matter. Even when Shakespeare is at his silliest—and at times
he can be very silly—through the comedies there runs a dark current that
often pinches the expectations of the audience. Sometimes the pinch is
light—The Comedy of Errors comes to mind—and sometimes the pinch is
sharper, so sharp, in fact, that while we might laugh, we also feel
discomforted.
Measure for Measure is one of the plays that gives a good, sharp pinch.
On the surface, it seems to be about “judge not, that ye not be judged,” and
indeed this message does come through very clearly. But Shakespeare’s plays
can never be reduced to mere messages because his characters are such a
bundle of contradictions that, as the saying goes, the waters are always
muddied. As the scholar Stanley Wells noted, “Measure for Measure
portrays a young woman experiencing…serious moral and emotional
problems…[its] relative lack of popularity over the centuries is among the
indicators of the challenges [it presents] to both intellect and
imagination.”
The
Theater at Monmouth’s fine production of Measure for Measure did not
shy away from the moral and emotional problems faced not only by a young
woman but by some of the men as well. The audience was moved briskly from
scene to scene, with the responses alternating between laughter and uneasy
silence. After the performance, one theatergoer even mentioned to me that
this play made her very uncomfortable, which to me indicates that the
Theater at Monmouth got it exactly right. This play shouldn’t make you feel
warm and happy. It is too complex for that.
Measure for Measure is set in old Vienna, which we are given to
understand has become a veritable den of inequity, the Gotham city of the
Renaissance, where houses of ill repute have flourished, and idle men while
away their afternoons in ways that they don’t mention to their wives. The
duke, disgusted by all the goings-on, decides to cede his authority to
Angelo, his deputy, a man of seemingly infinite virtue. The duke does this
for two reasons: first, to take on a disguise so that he can wander
undetected through the city and second, to test Angelo’s mettle and wisdom.
Poor
Angelo almost immediately fails his test by cracking down on Vienna with
such severity that it soon resembles a fascist state. Perhaps Vienna was too
decadent, but it is clear that the puritanical Angelo has gone too far,
sticking his prim nose in matters that should be private. In particular, his
ire has been directed against Claudio, a young man who has gotten a young
women named Juliet pregnant, and unfortunately they are betrothed but not
married. The penalty? Death. Claudio’s only hope is to have his sister
Isabella plead his case before the intractable Angelo. Apparently,
Isabella’s youth, combined with her powers of persuasion, make her a
valuable ally. The one hitch is that Isabella is a novice in a nunnery.
Nevertheless, Isabella is encouraged by Claudio’s friend Lucio, one of
Shakespeare’s endearing blabbermouths, and she decides to go make the case
for her brother’s life to be spared.
So far,
so good. Most sisters would plead for a brother’s life. But of course there
are complications. Angelo is very much taken with the ardent, youthful
Isabella’s speech. In fact, he is so taken with her that he begins to lust
for her. To be fair, it must be mentioned that Angelo struggles with his
temptation, at least a little. But in the end he gives in to it, and he
makes a deal with Isabella: Have sex with me, and I’ll free your brother.
Isabella is aghast, and it here that Shakespeare’s pinch becomes sharp. She
is convinced that her virtue is worth dying for, a sacrifice that her
brother Claudio should be more than willing to make, and her speeches to
this effect take on the shrill, rigid tone of a fanatic. As it turns out,
Claudio is not all that keen on making the sacrifice. He wants to live, and
his moving speech about the dread and horrors of death is bound to
reverberate with many in the audience. So, as Stanley Wells observed, we
have the fear of death colliding with the fear of sex, and this is not
exactly the subject of a rollicking comedy. Although Angelo’s conditions are
odious, I found myself in complete agreement with Claudio. That is, a life
is worth more than a woman’s virtue. At the same time, I couldn’t help
wonder what Elizabethan audiences thought of this. Isabella, after all, was
not just any woman; she was a novice getting ready to take holy orders.
Would they have sympathized with her or sided with Claudio? Or, would they
have been torn?
At any
rate, into this emotional scene comes the wandering duke, disguised as a
friar. He overhears the heated conversation between Claudio and Isabella,
and what follows are some of the most extreme examples of manipulation, much
of it sadistic, to be contrived by a leader. Here, again, the audience is in
a quandary. Does the duke really have to be such a slippery fellow? Why not
just throw off the disguise and set things right? Granted, this would have
shortened the play by quite a bit, but it certainly seems like the humane,
sensible thing to do. Needless to say, as history has proved, people are not
always sensible and humane, and the duke’s machinations at least tend in the
right direction. But, still!
The
Theater at Monmouth’s first-rate cast did a splendid job of handling the
complexity and ambiguity of this play. As the duke, R. Chris Reeder’s
performance was suitably nuanced—a mixture of intelligence, authority,
entitlement, and slyness. Mark S. Cartier’s Angelo was as crabbed, stiff,
and conflicted as Richard Nixon, a terrific portrayal of an extremely flawed
man. Particularly touching was Dustin Tucker’s performance as the doomed
Claudio, and his scene with the outraged Isabella was a marvelous
combination of subtlety and emotion, both of which can be very tricky to
achieve onstage, where distance is always an issue. For much-needed comic
relief, Dennis Price’s garrulous Lucio got it exactly right, and his scenes
with the duke, disguised as a friar, were hilarious. However, best of all
was Anna Soloway’s portrayal of Isabella, which was not only luminous but
also absolutely believable as she moved from pleading sister to
self-righteous narcissist.
Finally, the cast must be credited for its nearly superhuman powers of
concentration. On the night we attended, a bat flew into the house and
swooped over the heads of both the players and the audience. The players did
not miss a beat and continued without a break in the action. I must also
mention that no one in the audience shrieked as they were dive-bombed by the
bat. There were, of course, some sharp intakes of breath, ducking, and
muttering. But everyone remained in place, and the artistic director, Sally
Wood, eventually captured the bat in the balcony and let it go free. The
show went on.
