Dear Old Pal

Measure for Measure
The Birmingham Repertory Theatre
The Observer

Ever since 1947, the Assembly Hall has proved a fit setting for moral comedy. It is a wonder that Measure for Measure (staged by the Birmingham Rep) has never been seen there before. In his programme note, the director, Stuart Burge, claims the comedy to be as important as the morality, and for once programme and production agree.

The scenes of regulation humour are not- despite the warm presence of Russell Hunter, an impudently staring Pompey - unwontedly hilarious. But the blustering irony of David Suchet’s Lucio leaves its mark on the statelier characters, particularly on the Duke home Bernard Lloyd presents as a glib, roguish manipulator, taking to the Friar’s hood (Shakespeare’s friars being always somewhat akin to pandars) as if he were born to it. He bounds genially from plot to revelation, but the relish he projects is more properly the author’s than that character’s.

In getting us to giggle at the Duke’s schemes, Mr Burge ignores the fact that in the main, they work; both Angelo and Isabella are respectively knocked off their perches, and being knocked, learn charity. Anna Calder-Marshall’s voice and manner, at once shy and decisive, do very well for Isabella; the rebukes of overreaching authority have never sounded more searing. 

When David Burke’s Angelo lunged, there were scattered laughs, quickly and censoriously hushed. But the laughers were surely right; Mr Burke’s interpretation, if a trifle stodgy (a kind of blank verse Malvolio), in no way diminished the agony. When he whispered of his gravity ‘wherein - let no man hear me- I take pride,’ he was as vulnerable to ridicule as to contempt. He shows, too, a powerful talent for self-abasement - dropping to the deck overcome by guild or desire- that made me regret having missed his Othello.

This Angelo’s puritanism was not perhaps of the livid brand to conquer a city, even Edinburgh, and the play accordingly falls short of its full power. But many productions have fallen further.