Measure for Measure (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Measure for Measure Katharine Goodland Measure for Measure Presented by Theatre for a New Audience at The Duke on 42nd Street, New York, New York. February 6–March 14, 2010. Directed by Arin Arbus. Set by Peter Ksander. Costumes by David Zinn. Lighting by Marcus Doshi. Sound by Jane Shaw. Music by Sarah Pickett. With Jefferson Mays (Duke Vincentio), Robert Langdon Lloyd (Escalus), Rocco Sisto (Angelo), Joe Forbrich (Justice, Barnardine), Alfredo Narciso (Lucio), Elisabeth Waterston (Isabella), John Keating (Pompey), Mary Testa (Mistress Overdone), Samara Bay (Kate Keepdown), LeRoy McClain (Claudio), Graham Winton (Provost), Rose Seccareccia (Juliet, Punk), Denis Butkis (Friar Peter, Froth), Alyssa Bresnahan (Francisca, Mariana, Punk), and John Christopher Jones (Elbow, Abhorson) Arin Arbus’s production of Measure for Measure for Theatre for a New Audience had many of the signature qualities of her definitive 2009 production of Othello: simplicity of design, an eloquent use of theatrical space, and fluid staging that was sensitive to the dramatic tension inherent in specific scenes while at the same time cognizant of the play’s larger motifs and paradoxes. There is a spaciousness and stillness at the core of her productions which allows the text, the players, and the theatrical space to breathe and come to life with apparent effortlessness. The set design consisted primarily of three enormous doors along the upstage wall. Slight changes of lighting altered the doors’ aspects to shift the scene among the play’s three primary locales: the interior of the formal entrance to the Duke’s and Angelo’s offices, the interior of the prison, and the exterior world of the street. The stage itself remained largely bare: a desk was added to signify Angelo’s office; Claudio was granted a chair, center stage, for his prison cell. The cumulative effect of this shared space, altered in perspective by shifts in light, was to embody the play’s investigation of the sometimes tenuous line between virtue and vice, as scenes involving the underworld, or “Southwark,” characters followed hard upon those of the “virtuous” ones. Most memorable was Pompey’s arrest for pimping in 3.2. As Elbow entered at the top of the scene, declaring, “Nay, if there be no remedy for it but that you will needs buy and sell men and women like beasts, we shall have all the world drink brown and white bastard,” Pompey was interrogated by the Duke in the same spot that the Duke and Isabella had stood only moments before as they plotted what, in a certain light, could be seen as the “pimping” of Mariana. Arbus used the upstage balcony to emphasize these parallels and paradoxes: the Duke spied on Claudio’s and Isabella’s prison exchange [End Page 383] from this location; this was Mariana’s “moated grange”; and it served as Angelo’s garden where the bed trick occurred. In the final scene, the set’s three doors served as a symbolic frame for the play’s exploration of the fine line between marriage and prostitution. As Duke Vincentio meted out his “punishments” of marriage, each of the three central pairs completed their coupling by standing framed in the doorways—Claudio and Juliet in the center, Angelo and Mariana stage right, and Lucio and Kate Keepdown stage left. Inviting us to contemplate the similarities and differences amongst the three couples, this concluding tableau aptly symbolized the play’s complex and dark exploration of human appetite, memorialized most succinctly in Claudio’s observation that, “Our natures do pursue, / Like rats that ravin down their proper bane, / A thirsty evil, and when we drink, we die.” Like the set, the contemporary costumes were efficient and understated. The play began with a nod to its Renaissance roots with the Duke appearing in his ducal robes and crown, which he doffed as he made his abrupt departure. From this point on, the costumes were contemporary: dark gray suits for the Duke, Angelo, and Lucio, street clothes for Claudio (jeans and a t-shirt) and Juliet (a dress that accentuated her pregnancy), and fishnets, high heels, mini skirts and skimpy tops for the “bawds.” The middle-aged Mistress Overdone wore a longer dress than the younger women, but her...