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| Theatre by Nikki Sheppy Preview Rated 18+, The Shakespeare Company’s rendition of Measure for Measure is, if anything, even racier than the original play with its posse of bawds and sinners. Based on an adaptation by Charles Marowitz, the script pares the play down to its primary characters, turning it into a honed allegory that poses questions about legality and justice, virtue and sin. The Shakespearean tragicomedy tells the story of a nun named Isabella who must choose between her brother’s life and her own virtue when Angelo, a high-ranking official, tells her that he will pardon her brother if she beds with him that night. In a version that would have scandalized the Victorians, The Shakespeare Company adds S&M paraphernalia to a script already peppered with lusty intrigues. Donning costumes of dominance and submissivesness, Angelo and Isabella play out a power struggle studded with betrayal. Goodbye men in tights, hello men and women with whips ’n’ chains. It’s a move that’s meant to dust off the relic and translate it into modern terms, inflating the struggles between and within the characters so that we can fully appreciate the moral ambiguities. Any echoes of Bill and Monica are purely intentional. According to actors Brent Weaver and Anne-Marie Herberts, who play the dueling duo, the Marowitz version adds dimension to their characters. "I think that Angelo is not altogether an evil man," says Weaver, "though he may or may not do evil deeds. He’s a weak man, which I think can be said about many of the other characters in this play too.... "There’s a line where Angelo asks, ‘What would you do?’ and to me that’s the whole play because that’s what every character is asked. How they answer is what drives the play to where it goes." For her part, Herberts portrays Isabella not as a victim, but as a woman who makes her own choices and has to live with them. "In a lot of plays, it’s a very cut and dried character, but in this one, there are so many personal choices you make," says Herberts. "Is Isabella weak or is she strong? I’m more inclined to make my character strong, and that’s just because of who I am. But then I’m forced to find a weakness and to try not to win every scene." So, is Angelo a cad and Isabella a paragon of virtue and moral deliberation? Director Richard Kenyon agrees with his two stars that it’s never that clear. "Everybody’s self-righteous," says Kenyon, "filtering the whole play through them and what they want. But there is no obvious evil man or woman that we can say is in the wrong." He relishes the complexity of the characters, citing current trends – especially in Hollywood – away from ambiguity. "What’s happening nowadays is that so many actors are trying to make their characters nice. ‘I’m a villain but, no, I’m really a nice guy.’ So there becomes this kind of wacka-wacka at the end of every scene, which is so destructive to the production. But Brent and Anne-Marie don’t do that." Despite the insinuation of using leather-clad figures, Measure for Measure is set in a timeless period: yesterday, today and tomorrow. It’s a setting that gestures to just how all-pervasive the power struggle is. "Everybody encounters situations in their lives that are very similar," says Weaver. "The dressings are different but the consequences to us emotionally are very much the same. What determines how our lives are going to turn out is the decisions that we make once faced with those situations. We create our own lives as we go. I’m not a fatalist. I believe that every minor decision we make affects our lives tremendously." And if you think you know how everything wraps up, think again. Among Marowitz’s alterations is a drastic re-scripting of what Kenyon calls the happy-go-lucky deus ex machina conclusion to the original. |
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