MEASURE FOR MEASURE

Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol

Amongst the Shakespearean canon, Measure for Measure is one of those plays of which many have heard, but which surprisingly few have read or seen. A brief plot summary may therefore be useful. When the Duke of Vienna decides it is time to crack down on his unruly populace, he elects to hand over power to sea-green incorruptible Angelo to do the deed, and adopts the anonymity of a friar's habit to observe his deputy's actions. One of Angelo's first acts is to enforce the much-neglected law prescribing death as the punishment for fornication against Claudio. Isabella, Claudio's virginal sister, calls upon Angelo to plead for her brother's life. Her innocent purity stirs strange longings in Angelo's breast, and he offers to save Claudio in return for deflowering Isabella. All that lies between Angelo's reading of the law and Claudio's slough of despond is Isabella's maidenhead, yet she refuses to submit to this constructive rape - until the disguised Duke comes up with a cunning plan to use Mariana, Angelo's abandoned fiancée, as a substitute.

The play is a sinuous weave of plot twists and complex manipulations by the Duke, leaving one with a sense of Shakespeare as a proto-John Grisham. For those who like an airport blockbuster feel to their Jacobethan drama, it is therefore ideal. However, there is a sense that Shakespeare has opted for a nifty bit of intricate plotting at the expense of his more customary in-depth examination of the humane issues which lie at the play's heart.

Even director Andrew Hilton, a committed Shakespeare lover, appears to feel that Measure for Measure is less than perfect. With the aid of playwright Dominic Power he has sought to "develop the play in some respects" - a euphemistic way of saying that they have stuck some bits in. Whilst the early insertion of a scene between the Duke and Mariana serves to enlighten the audience about Mariana's position, the new scene showing Angelo's defloration of the woman he assumes to be Isabella seems merely to echo the trend amongst television literary adaptations of depicting what the original text merely implied.

Apart from this one questionable addition, one cannot fault Hilton's direction. Whilst many directors use Shakespeare to propound their latest clever interpretation - be it German Expressionism or the Bard in outer space - Hilton prefers simply to concentrate on the meaning of Shakespeare's text. There is no empty verse in one of his productions, and even line oozes directorial scrutiny. Complementing this attention to detail are remarkably focused performances by Lucy Black (Isabella) and John Mackay (Angelo). Black is an astounding actress who dazzles with her absolute embodiment of any role she takes on, and Mackay's Angelo is not the brutal puritan he could so easily be, but rather a bitterly repressed individual who is almost a prisoner of his own asceticism, deserving pity as much as contempt. And although Measure for Measure is a 'comedy' (in the academic sense) rather than a comedy (in the fall-about-laughing sense), both Chris Donnelly (Pompey) and Cameron Fitch (Lucio) provide excellent comic timing to lighten the mood.

Despite some outstanding performances, however, this production cannot rival Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory's previous productions of Lear and Midsummer Night's Dream, simply because the material underlying it is less strong. But you'd have to go a very long way to find a better production of Measure for Measure.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE