Variations
on Measure for Measure
Tygres
Heart Shakespeare Company at the Winningstad Theater, Portland
Center for the Performing Arts, 1111 SW Broadway, 288-8400.
7 pm Thursdays, 8 pm Fridays, 2 and 8 pm Saturdays, 2 pm Sundays.
Ends Nov. 5. Call for ticket prices.
"Puritanism carried
to its logical conclusion leads to sadism."
--Aldous Huxley
Earlier variations
on Measure for Measure were written by William Davenant
and Charles Gildon
Purists who hold each word of Shakespeare sacrosanct may
feel a sharp slap with Charles Marowitz's Variations
on Measure for Measure, for the famed Shakespearean
director has not only trimmed extraneous scenes while embellishing
with new ones, he has radically altered the action, making
this "problem play" less problematical--except, of course,
for bardolaters.
Marowitz has made an intriguing career out of adaptations
of classics, not only by Shakespeare but Ibsen and Strindberg
as well. But Marowitz isn't providing a parlor game of idiosyncratic
improvements and interpretations but, rather, is intellectually
interested to see what would happen to a text if minor plot
points were elaborated upon or if major plot transitions
were overturned and the opposite of what happens in the
original text took place. In the case of Measure for
Measure, what if Isabella had allowed Angelo to fuck
her?
In Measure for Measure, Isabella is a young nunnery
novice who must plead for the life of her brother, Claudio,
who has been sentenced to death by the powerful Angelo.
Angelo has been placed in temporary power by the Duke of
Vienna, but he wastes no time in asserting his authority.
In this Freudian pre-Freud Vienna, the puritanical Angelo
rules, Mikado-style, that anyone having sex outside of marriage
will lose their head. Claudio, having only impregnated his
fiancée, is the first case of the law. When Isabella
arrives at the palace to beg Angelo's mercy, the cold tyrant
begins burning for the pure novice. In a debauch of power,
Angelo strikes a deal with Isabella: her brother's life
for her body (or as Jan Kott put it more succinctly, "Head
for maidenhead, and maidenhead for head").
Modern audiences often lack sympathy for Isabella, for
the novice puts such value on her chastity that she cannot
conceive losing it even for her brother's sake. She further
believes that Claudio would agree that such shame would
be too great a sacrifice. She is mistaken. Isabella is saved
by the Duke, who has disguised himself as a monk. He concocts
a plan whereby Isabella agrees to Angelo's demands, but
in a clever "bed trick" her place will be taken by Angelo's
spurned fiancée.
The "comedy" is all gift-wrapped up at the final moment
when all the various subterfuges are revealed. Angelo is
paired with his fiancée as Claudio is with his. But
then the Duke demands that Isabella give him her hand as
all good comedies must end in an orgy of wedlock. There's
something disturbing about this scene: Isabella's voice
is missing, and the silence is deafening.
In Marowitz's version, Isabella's lines on the importance
of chastity are not the veiled platitudes of a frigid woman,
for she is painfully aware of the narrow world of women
among men: virgin, wife, slag. One misstep leads from the
cloister to the clapoir ("nunnery" was also 16th-century
slang for whorehouse). Marowitz brilliantly makes this point
by jettisoning the tediously bardic comic subplot of Froth
and Elbow and elaborating upon the tertiary subplot involving
the bawds Overdone (here Bridget) and Pompey Bum. Angelo's
ruling adversely affects Vienna's brothels, leading to the
comic pair's degradation (they too lose their heads, as
their hair is cropped for prison). It's a degradation as
pronounced as Isabella's after she finally submits to Angelo's
will. Like them, Isabella's life must end submissively before
the city's formidable hierarchy of men. Absolute power corrupts
absolutely.
Marowitz's production, one of the clearest and most disciplined
to be seen in Portland, will come as a shock to anyone familiar
with the Winningstad's recent history. There are excellent
moments of stagecraft, such as the scene where a near-stripped
Angelo likens the law to a scarecrow while his vestments
hang ominously behind him. There is also Marowitz's own-devised
prison scene between Bridget and Isabella that superbly
(in his own cod Shakespeare) states this variation's theme,
which ends, finally, with Isabella being raped by the carnal
stares of her captors. Hanging above all is the promulgated
law itself, written upon a scrim from behind which we witness
Isabella's downfall. Here is a director possessing both
vision and style who is in full command of the stage. Marowitz's
production is electric.
As this is Portland, the acting is uneven. For once, though,
no one is bad. As Isabella, Abby Craden is a striking presence
on stage. She occasionally hits false notes, but her Isabella
is dynamically alive, brilliantly capturing her character's
struggle between moral strictness and physical vulnerability.
Tim Blough's Angelo is expertly measured, never erring toward
cheap villainy. Jim Eikrem and the undervalued Jonathan
Molitor are finally given work worthy of them, while Andrew
Hickman and Kammi Harris excel as the Restoration-painted
fop and trull, Pompey and Bridget.
This may not be Shakespeare's play, yet, strangely, it's
the best Shakespeare I've seen in four long, dry years.
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