Measure For Measure

Shakespeare’s late ‘problem comedy’ gets a rare airing at the Belvoir in a full-on, jaw-dropping production by rising ringmaster Benedict Andrews. Well, my jaw dropped several times in the course of an unsettling and challenging evening.

Resolutely re-imagined, the 1604 play is set in an upmarket 2010 hotel room containing a fashionable glass-walled bathroom with working shower and toilet. Jaws dropped as, from time to time, undies dropped so that characters could relieve themselves (and worse) in full view. Nothing is hidden in this ‘Vienna’: roving video cameramen support in-built camera positions (there’s one behind the bathroom mirror) that send constant, live-edited images to two large screens beside the set and, presumably, to the rest of the city outside, and onwards by MySpace, perhaps. Each actor wears a tiny microphone. It’s a wired, Big Brother world — and brilliantly handled in-house technology.

Andrews’ adapted text is performed by a dozen hard-working actors doubling and trebling as required, but the gleaming bones of Shakespeare’s play remain. When Vincentio (Robert Menzies), the fair-minded Duke of a sex-obsessed Vienna, decides to inspect his city from the inside he hands power to Angelo (Damon Gameau), his upright deputy, and dons the light disguise of a cowled priest. Nobody recognises their long-time boss, rather like nobody spots that Clark Kent is Superman wearing spectacles. But absolute power corrupts Angelo the instant he meets Isabella (Robin McLeavy), an attractive novitiate nun who comes begging for the life of her condemned brother Claudio (Chris Ryan).

While lewdness, lying and bodily functions are on general display, Isabella is the suffering, moral centre of the tale, and McLeavy is especially fine. She is both precise and passionate, and her verse-speaking is superb, putting to shame some of the rushed mumblings around her.

Also notable are Toby Schmitz as an untrustworthy dandy scoffing chocolates from the minibar, Helen Thomson doubling as mini-skirted brothel-keeper and scorned aristocrat, and Frank Whitten as a rake-thin ancient lord who manages to balance fairness and power.

This is an extravagant blitz of a production. The room spins giddily as the bed gets a pounding, pillow feathers fill the stage after an opening orgy, and there’s prolonged masturbation and (yuk!) fecal smearing. It’s time to re-hinge my jaw.

Frank Hatherley

Image: Robin McLeavy and Arky Michael - Photographer: Heidrun Lohr