I kindly received another freebie from one of my Aunts to see Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare at the Belvoir Theatre. Before the show, I had dinner at Al Aseel (the Surry Hills one) with Uncle Ron, Uncle Rob and Aunt Rosie. Yes, yes – 4 x Rs!
I didn’t know much about this particular production, so was in for a big surprise. The stage design was great, it consisted of a hotel room with bed, bathroom, tv and bar fridge that rotated 360 degrees. The actors were all amazing speaking in classic Shakespearean language, with occasional modern day lines. At first it was a bit hard to understand what they were saying, but a little bit of high school Shakespeare came back to me. The blurb said Theatre for the open-minded, which it certainly was. One scene was really violent, gory and vile! The characters went to the toilet a lot on stage! The most intriguing part of the production was the use of video cameras that projected the action onto screens next to the stage. The camera operators were the actors, out of character, but on stage. There was also a camera inside the bathroom mirror and one pointing directly down from above as well. Sometimes, I didn’t know where to look, it’s a small theatre so you could see all the action on stage quite clearly, not like you were at a concert and really far away, so you look at the screens. Anyway, it was a really great production, the story was intense and so was the acting. Although it was a bit disturbing, I really enjoyed it (and it wasn’t as intense as Women of Troy)
This is a permissive, decaying city with a dysfunctional government, and the Duke has mysteriously gone on leave. In his place he’s appointed a man whose “urine is congealed ice” – the austere moralist Angelo. His first act of law is to apply the death penalty for fornication: Claudio is the first to be condemned. But when Isabella arrives to beg for her brother’s life, her pleas threaten to bring Angelo and the state to their knees.
Measure for Measure is Shakespeare’s great dark comedy about desire and power. His world is familiar: sex is a commodity, government is subject to the leader’s moral whimsy, extreme liberality goes head to head with emergency powers to constrain and punish. And lurking in the shadows of this play is the idea that real wisdom comes from unleashed chaos.
Benedict Andrews was last at Belvoir St in 2007 with his brilliant production of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf. He’s returned to tackle a play he’s probably born to direct: Shakespeare’s magnificent and explicit meditation on anarchy and authority.
Theatre for the open-minded.
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