Measure for Measure

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Donmar Warehouse on 18 October 2018

Josie Rourke (the outgoing Artistic Director of the Donmar) directs Hayley Atwell as Isabella and Jack Lowden as Angelo in an intriguing production of Shakespeare's problematic play concerning the abuse of power in sexual politics and the conflicting claims of justice and mercy.

The play opens in sixteenth century dress, with the political world very masculine, not to say patriarchal. But the contemporary relevance is all too obvious - the rule of law ignored through inattention, laziness or dereliction of duty, and the opportunities for a powerful man to abuse his authority just there for the taking. And this is what Angelo, deputising for an absent Duke, does in relation to Isabella - he offers the life of her brother Claudio in exchange for sexual favours. When she protests and threatens to publicise his actions, he asks her chillingly "Who will believe thee, Isabel?"

The precariousness of Isabella's situation is both helped and hindered by the Duke's actions. Having colluded in the opening situation and then walked away from it, he has returned to Vienna disguised as a friar, and he tries to 'help' by suggesting the use of the bed trick to entrap Angelo (who has, it is suddenly revealed, himself jilted Mariana, a young woman who loves him). It seems like the usual ploy of a romantic comedy, but in the context of this play, it is distasteful. The likes of Isabella, Mariana and even Claudio take the friar at face value, but in fact he has no spiritual authority at all. Furthermore, when all is revealed and marriages are forced upon Claudio (though his fiancee never appears) and on Angelo, Isabella is begged by Mariana to sue for Angelo's life, and then further the Duke suggests that she should marry him, thus riding completely roughshod over her intention of entering a convent. No words are given to Isabella to respond to what is yet another example of male dominance in disposing of a woman's life. In this production, quite credibly, she just screams.

This is the end of the play; but we have not yet reached the interval. A good deal has been cut, the subplot with the whores and whoremasters of Vienna being stripped back almost to nothing. Just before the interval starts, we are suddenly back at the first scene, but this time in modern dress, and the Duke is deputising Isabella to act in his place while he leaves the city. What was done with parchment and wax seals at the beginning is now done with phone texts and tweets.

In an even more brief recapitulation of the play, Angelo now is the young man dedicated to a spiritual life (not conventionally monastic, but more contentiously in some sort of Christian commune), and in begging Isabella for mercy on his brother's behalf, he becomes the victim of Isabella, a predatory woman. It's an intriguing reversal, and a salutary reminder that personal relationships can be unbalanced and corrupted by a woman in power as easily as by a man. In some ways, the reversal exposes the disturbing power plays even more acutely, as the disguised Duke presses his even more obviously unwanted attentions on the naive young Angelo. But the play cannot really bear this burden, and at the last moment the Renaissance Isabella presents herself before the modern Duke with an ambiguous greeting.

Hayley Atwell and Jack Lowden play both their parts extremely well. In the first half she is an intense and self confident young woman gradually weakened, and he an austere deputy Duke with a soft-spoken Scottish accent (hinting perhaps at a Calivinistic outlook?), and each is gradually weakened by the complicating factors swirling around their personal encounters. Interestingly, Angelo's soliloquy about his predicament is given due weight, though it by no means exonerates him. In their reversed roles, Atwell is far more sensuous as the powerful woman, and Lowden has less moral authority and perhaps more naivety. It is fascinating to watch in effect two interpretations of the same speeches in quick succession, and this emphasises even more the problems which this play reveals to a modern audience.