Brook's Mesure pour Mesure

Measure for Measure
Théâtre des Bouffes-du-Nord
The Observer

Talking or writing about the theatre over the last few years, Peter Brook has always come back to Measure for Measure. Now at his Paris theatre, the Bouffes-du-Nord, he has come back to it in another literal sense.

In 1950, he directed a production of this play at Stratford which those who saw it still recall with rapture. In his book ‘The Empty Space’ Mr Brook writes of ‘a base world…the disgusting, stinking world of medieval Vienna… we must animate all this stretch of the play as the roughest comedy we can make…the rough is in the prose the rest in verse…if we iron Shakespeare into any one typography of theatre we lose the real meaning of the play.’ The italics are mine; I believe that sentence to be of vital importance in the consideration of almost any Shakespeare play.

But it does not altogether apply to the Mesure pour Mesure Mr Brook has staged in Paris, since Jean-Claude Carriere’s French adaptation ignores the ‘clear signal’ (Mr Brook’s phrase) that Shakespeare gives when the play is about to jump tracks: It is all in prose, and clipped declarative prose at that. It speeds that action along and Mr Brooks direction moves at a matching clip. No longer a confusion, the play remains a puzzle. There are not glaring contradictions in it - Angelo and Mistress Overdone belong to the same hard, clear world, but there is no overriding coherence either. Everyone is himself, firmly drawn, without apology or explanation.

This even applies to the one character for whom most directors feel compelled to invent a rationale. Shakespeare gave the Duke little personality but it is customary to make him the vehicle of an interpretation, agent of Providence or greasy manipulator. François Marthouret, a dazzling actor, sticks to the basics of charm and authority.

Mr Brook may have had in mind a legend of justice - the most powerful tableau of the evening consists of the three judges - Duke, Angelo and Escalus standing side by side - but his production says surprisingly little about it, or about the twin subject of mercy. Isabella pauses long before agreeing to bed for Angelo’s life, but her hesitation lacks the explosive effect it apparently had in 1950. There can be no doubt that Clementine Amouroux’s crew-cut Isabella will do the decent thing; youthfully idealistic (and for the role, ideally young), she lacks rigidity or spiritual pride.

The most complex performance is Bruce Myer’s Angelo which moves easily from self-satisfaction to self-hatred by (and this is something of a revelation) a comic route; the clean thrust of the translation puts a hard edge on the revolving paradox of his situation.

But then the whole company is, as ever, commandingly unfussed, notably Maurice Benichou’s sleek, chic Lucio and Andreas Katsulas’s huge, and hugely ingratiating, Pompey. There is some viciousness in M. Benichou, but M. Katsulas seems harmless. Theirs is not the reeking world of which Mr Brook has written, but then, in his neat Mesure his ideal Measure has gone by default. On this occasion he has stretched the mind, not blown it.