Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Open Space, Yale School of Drama
The Observer

I must apologise for coming late to Charles Marowitz’s production of Measure for Measure (Open Space), but it deserves more than a mention. It begins with the Viennese hierarchy—Duke, Deputy and Ancient Lord, plus a Bishop of the director’s own invention—bestowing on each other the knowing winks and benevolent glances of the well-fed. Richard Mayes’s Duke is, appropriately, the blandest of them all; his voice, as he hands over power to the precise Angelo, is coated with ozone. Such men are dangerous.

In Mr. Marowitz’s dispensation the Duke then vanishes till the end of the play. He does not lurk around the city, keeping tabs on everyone in the guise of friar. Perhaps Mr. Marowitz has something against friars; Shakespeare wrote a genuine pair into the play, but they have gone and the Bishop has seized upon their lines.

The Duke’s absence shortens the play considerably; but at first no other significant changes are noticeable. We seem to be getting a quiet, bare, concentrated version of the original, which I was prepared to mark down as the best I had seen. (I have been unlucky in my Measures.) Certainly Ciaran Madden’s Isabella outstrips (she gets down to her slip at one point) all others in my experience. Above all else, she is fresh; there are no wrinkles on her face, her mind or her sensibility. So her beauty can quite credibly topple a Puritan (Angelo was probably kinky for nuns, anyway); and she is sheltered enough to build her life in dogma, untroubled by doubt. Miss Madden, unlike most young actresses in Shakespeare, does not circle her emotions, or tunnel underneath them she meets Isabelle’s rage, her horror, her forensic fire, her limited good sense, all head on; she conquers and embodies all of them. In all respects save one, this is the complete Isabella.

The omission, however, is crucial. In Mr. Marowitz’s version Isabella is still saddled with the notorious formulation ‘More than our brother is our chastity.’ But she does not have to commit herself to it since this Isabella, having thought the matter over, scammers off to bed with Angelo. She even shows momentary signs next morning of having fun.

This is the first of Mr. Marowitz’s departures from Shakespeare’s plot; others follow. Claudio is executed, for real; there is no substitution of a convenient pirate’s head. The Duke returns, hears the evidence, dismisses Isabella’s pleas, protects Angelo. The play ends with the ruling class more frolic-some than ever.

Even by his own lights Mr. Marowitz is inconsistent here: he has retained the early scene, in which the Duke declares his intention of testing Angelo; why then does he set the results of the test aside? The latter end of Mr. Marowitz’s commonwealth forgets his beginning. But I am inclined to forgive him for several reasons. First for the ingenuity with which he re-orders the old words to a new end; this is the cleverest of his Shakespearean jigsaws. Second, for the tautness of his production and the intelligence of its acting. (Brian Gwaspari’s Claudio is particularly good.) Third, the sentimental cynicism with which Mr. Marowitz concludes his self-proclaimed ‘adaptation’ has often been foisted on to the play by directors claiming to present the thing itself. The accepted mode of re-interpreting a classic is to make everyone in it as nasty (hence as uncomplicated) as possible. This makes the director feel tough and defiant, particularly when the characters represent authority. By a twisted logic it also allows him to express his dislike of his author (who is certainly part of the establishment) and his audience (who are presumed to be). Directors are often their own evidence that power corrupts.

The habit is world-wide. In America last month I was urged to visit the Yale School of Drama to see a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which, it was claimed, opened up a new area for American Shakespeare. The novelty turned out to reside in a stressing of the violence in the play. The squabbling of Oberon and Titania had real force, even real terror; you could believe that it would affect the course of the seasons. The forest itself was terrifying, not least in the demands it made on the actors. Oberon’s ability to keep his footing on a nearly vertical ramp was proof enough for magical powers. 

So far, excellent, but the director, Alvin Epstein, failed to justify his preoccupations in the rest of the play. The court scenes were backed by a giant battle-painting, after Uccello (very striking; design now ranks with dance among the highest skills of the American theatre). In front of it Theseus and Hippolyta attempted a quarrel unsupported by the text. The lovers thumped each other and fell about; but they always do that. The clowns were traditional, too. (There was even deaf Starveling; I haven’t seen one of those since 20 years ago in Regent’s Park.) Sometimes in the action froze while a chorus rendered excerpts from Purcell’s ‘Fairy Queen.’ This, in Bottom’s words, was lofty (on this showing, they sing at Yale far better than they act), but it spun out the play to a length unheard-of since the days of Beerbohm Tree. As a combination of insight with insensitive silliness the production would be hard to beat.