Toronto Star, August 15, 2005
Actors are up to Measure in clever, lustful staging
By: Robert Crew
Talk about saving one of the best for last.
Richard Monette, Stratford Festival's artistic director since 1994, vowed to do all of Shakespeare's plays during his tenure and this production of Measure for Measure, which opened at the Tom Patterson Theatre on Saturday, fulfils that promise.
It also happens to be a dazzling, totally absorbing evening of theatre and well worth the drive to Stratford.
It opens with a raunchy nightclub scene, with scantily clad men and women doing acrobatics on hoops or winding themselves around steel trusses. The time period is not specified but as a police SWAT team launches a brutal raid, it's obvious that we are witnessing a decadent society where good order has broken down and copulation thrives.
That opening helps makes sense of the Duke's decision to go underground for a while and let his strait-laced, incorruptible deputy, Angelo, clean up the mess.
The Duke (Thom Marriott), meanwhile, is watching the goings-on, disguised as a stooped, hand-wringing priest, who sports sunglasses and a beret.
But when Isabella (Dana Green) comes calling to try to save her brother, who has been sentenced to death, Angelo (Jonathan Goad) proves to be rather less pure than everyone thought. He proposes a deal: her virginity for her brother's life.
It's a pivotal scene; if a director can make it work, the rest of the play should fly. And Leon Rubin and his superb cast do just that.
For a start, Goad's Angelo is no block of ice. He has a conscience and plainly struggles to control his lust but, to cite just one of many rich details, he buckles at the knees when Isabella innocently asks him: "What is your pleasure?"
To modern sensibilities, Isabella can appear a bit of a prig but, in what is an unforgettable performance, Green pours such moment-to-moment integrity and honesty into the character that her decision and outrage are totally believable. This is wonderful work.
And director Rubin helps in a variety of ways. For example, Angelo gets so memorably carried away at one point that he flings Isabella onto his spartan, steel desk and nearly rapes her on the spot.
Similar, intelligently thought-out choices are evident throughout the production. Marriott's Duke is smiling, affable and appears wise and sympathetic but you get the uneasy feeling that there's something not quite right about him. He touches Isabella rather a lot and clearly relishes the head games he's playing with various people.
This, it turns out, is Rubin's canny way of preparing us for the final moments of the play, when the Duke declares his "love" for Isabella. A look of surprise and horror crosses her face as the lights dim and she realizes that she may have escaped one ugly situation only to find herself facing another.
It's not a new idea to end the play this way, but the build-up has been unusually well done.
Three stellar acting performances then. But the rest of the cast also responds with skill and total commitment.
Among the Duke's court, Robert King is a pillar of strength as Escalus and Paul Hopkins injects some life into the shadowy character of the Provost.
As Isabella's brother Claudio, Jeffrey Wetsch's speech may be somewhat breathless but he delivers the lines with emotion and vulnerability.
Down among the low life, Don Carrier is an energetic, mischievous rogue of a Lucio while Andrew Massingham's Pompey is delightfully eccentric and genuinely amusing and Diane D'Aquila's Mistress Overdone is a vision in shocking pink.
The playground set of John Pennoyer is clever and effective, as is the dramatic lighting of Robert Thomson.
Stratford has had a measure of success with Shakespeare this summer and now has a totally successful Measure.