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Measure for Measure at the RSC: 1997-98 by Alan C. Dessen |
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The most controversial choices and changes I witnessed in 1998 were found in director Michael Boyd's RSC production of Measure for Measure; Like the other 1998 RSC Shakespeare shows this Measure was replete with striking visual images and effects. I have seen many variations on the duke-as-friar (including one Friar Lodowick who wore sneakers), but Robert Glenister's duke was the first I have seen played as blind. The brothel was unusually elaborate in 1.2 with many punks and customers clustered on and around the huge staircase that dominated the set; equally elaborate were the prison scenes in act four, especially the opening of 4.3 where Pompey provided bread and water to a large number of prisoners (including Kate Keepdown and Froth) seen only as heads that popped up from beneath the stage. Here and elsewhere images of cruelty and oppression were plentiful: in 3.2 Lucio stepped on Pompey's fingers and pushed him down into a trapdoor; in 4.2 the presence upstage of a uniformed spy-observer conveyed a sense of a police state under Angelo. |
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Such onstage images alone cannot explain the strong and varied reactions to this production, a range of responses evident in the disagreement among reviewers. A positive response was provided by Michael Billington (The Guardian) who glimpsed in this show a new RSC aesthetic, "one that may be less than textually pure but that draws on other traditions, including opera and cinema, as a key to the plays' eternal problems. Stratford desperately needs a touch of danger, and in Boyd it has found a director who can supply it." Less sanguine were Charles Spencer (The Daily Telegraph) who opined that this director "seems more intent on drawing attention to himself than the play" and John Peter (The Sunday Times) who concluded that the "changes and cuts in the text" signal "that the director is imposing a private agenda on the play rather than exploring and resolving its difficulties--which is much harder work." The most extensive critique was provided by Alistair Macaulay (The Financial Times) who started with a series of options for a director (e.g., "Do you try to turn newcomers into connoisseurs? Or to make the connoisseurs feel like newcomers?"), moved to some pejorative descriptions of Boyd's choices, and concluded that this production "is full of incidental effects that can only confuse people coming to the play for the first time; it casts no valuable new light for those who have seen the play before. It puzzles but it does not interest." In striking contrast to Billington, Macaulay went so far as to suggest that Boyd's production "even confirms the long-growing impression that Shakespeare is the millstone around the RSC's neck. For whom does the director direct? And why?" |
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Those who have not seen this show may well wonder: why all the fuss? A major source of the controversy was signaled by the program note: "The text used in this production is edited by Michael Boyd from the Arden edition. My highly unscientific sampling suggested that many playgoers who did not know the received script well were engaged by this show (with its many images evocative of East European power struggles), whereas those familiar with the received text were far less sanguine. As might be inferred from the program note, script changes were numerous. Gone from 4.1 were the opening song and the duke's speech during the Isabella-Mariana conference; the meeting of Isabella, Mariana, and Friar Peter in 4.6 (with its context for the women's testimony in 5.1) was omitted, as were the duke's explanation why he withholds from Isabella the news of Claudio being spared ("But I will keep her ignorant of her good, / To make her heavenly comforts of despair / When it is least expected"--4.3.106-8) and numerous lines in 5.1, including the final couplet. |
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A mere listing of cuts and changes, however, cannot explain the controversy, for what matters most is the nature of such alterations and their overall effect upon the story being told. Put simply, what made this show so distinctive was its beginning and ending. This Measure began with the duke slumped in a chair, an empty gin bottle by his side; without speaking a word this figure then fled up a runway through the audience when Escalus and others punched a hole through the upstage door (Angelo and his followers arrived later). The duke's speeches that constitute much of 1.1 were then heard on a gramophone, a choice that inevitably involved a great deal of rearranging of the text and elimination of dialogue interchanges. Perhaps most important, 1.1 in this version ceased to be a scene in which the duke effected in public a controlled transfer of power but became something decidedly different--and some playgoers had difficulty finding justification for that difference. |
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The body of the show then, as already noted, provided some strong images, but the presentation of the central story involving Isabella (Clare Holman), Angelo (Stephen Boxer), and the duke was not all that unusual. Rather, the director's distinctive interpretation became visible again in 4.4 (a key building block in this show) where Shakespeare's dialogue in which Escalus and Angelo puzzle over the duke's return was transformed into a scene that displayed Angelo gathering armed supporters around him for a permanent takeover (the duke's announced return had become a threat), followed by the duke's meeting with Varrius and other allies (Angelo's soliloquy that ends 4.4 was repositioned after this abbreviated 4.5). |
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The events and dilemmas of 5.1 that traditionalists deem the essence of this problematic script were then presented in somewhat abbreviated form and at times were overshadowed by other highly visible images. For example, the duke's speech to Isabella on the celerity of Claudio's death (386-92) was gone as was much material after Isabella's speech in response to Mariana's plea; in contrast, pride of place was given to the emergence from beneath the stage of the many disheveled prisoners (not just Claudio and Barnadine) blinking in the light. The major thrust of the sequence was the display of a coup and counter-coup. For much of this scene armed soldiers loyal to Angelo were lined up behind him and Escalus while a large number of other figures observed the action from the staircase. Those who started the scene on the stairs were joined by Varrius and others (who at the end of 4.5 had exited at the back of the auditorium), many of whom had rifles concealed under their cloaks, so that when Friar Lodowick was revealed to be the duke, the duke's faction got the drop on Angelo's faction. Guns were plentiful in this sequence, including a pistol Lucio held to the duke's head which the duke appropriated to threaten both Lucio and Angelo (and even Friar Peter had a gun). |
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Without question, the story being told here and the images being set forth were strong and timely: a coup had been forestalled; those imprisoned by an oppressive regime had been released into the light of day. Yet what many readers take to be the heart of this script--Isabella's choice to lend a knee to Mariana and plead for the life of Angelo--seemed somehow diminished, less important, to the extent that one veteran playgoer described this Measure to me as a very interesting play--by Michael Boyd. The reviews cited earlier frame the issues well. Do this and comparable productions indeed bring into focus "the plays' eternal problems" by introducing a salutary "touch of danger" (Billington) or is this director "imposing a private agenda on the play rather than exploring and resolving its difficulties" (Peter). Wherein lies an appropriate approach to bringing Shakespeare's scripts to the stage in a new century? What if any boundaries do or should exist in the pursuit of innovation and in-the-theatre excitement for the RSC or any other company? Boyd's choices and changes brought such questions into focus more forcefully than any production I have seen in recent years. |
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Note: Citations from Shakespeare are from The Complete Pelican Shakespeare, gen. ed. Alfred Harbage (Baltimore, 1969); the citation from Bartholomew Fair is from the Revels edition, ed. E. A. Horsman (London, 1960). |