Measure for Measure, at the Almeida March 22, 2010
Posted by CamdenKiwi in : Reviews , add a commentShakespeare’s Measure for Measure is a difficult play. Its not really a comedy although everyone pairs off, more or less, at the end. It’s not really a tragedy, though Angelo at least doesn’t come out of it too well. What is the Duke? A noble ruler tiring of his role, or just a nasty old meddler who likes setting people up for a fall? And then there’s Isabella. What to make of her? Isabella is a novice in a convent, about to take her vows. Her brother is condemned to death for fornication, but Angelo, who has been left in charge of Vienna while the Duke goes away, promises to free him if she will sleep with him – Angelo, that is. She refuses. Fair enough, if a little harsh. She then expects her brother to be perfectly happy with this, and go nobly to the scaffold. Sometimes, particularly in the BBC film version, Isabella comes over as naive, caught up in her own black and white world, little caring for anyone.
In the Almeida’s beautifully nuanced production, I finally get Isabella. Here, played by Anna Maxwell Martin, she’s strong and self-confident, but there is something damaged about her attitude to men. She argues forcefully with Angelo (Rory Kinnear), refuses to give in to him, but the body language is a little ambiguous. In telling her brother of her decision, and persuading him to accept it, she hugs him in a way that close enough to incestuous to be uncomfortable. Is she flirting with the Duke (Ben Miles)? In the end, when the Duke’s plot to deceive her is revealed, she’s not particularly happy to see her brother return from the dead, and her rejection of the Duke is scornful. This is clearly a woman who, for whatever reason, wants to get to her nunnery.
As Ben Miles said in the aftershow talkback, in Shakespeare, the characters always have the perfect words to express themselves, and one of the joys of this production is the extremely high quality of the speaking, from every actor. They are truly wonderful.
The Almeida theatre has very cheap restricted view seats (£8), behind narrow poles that you can easily see around. Even from E21, at the back of the circle, I had a reasonable view. It’s all sold out now, though there may be returns until it finishes on 10 April.
