Measure For Measure review: ‘An impressively sharp, tightly focused production’

Botanic Gardens, Glasgow

****

The Merry Wives of Wishaw

***

It’s only a few weeks since audiences in the Kibble Palace could be heard gasping at the boldness of Ibsen’s plot-line in Hedda Gabler, adapted by Kathy McKean for this Bard In The Botanics season inspired by unforgettable female characters. And it’s a tribute to the intensity of Jennifer Dick’s new version of Shakespeare’s pitch-dark late comedy Measure For Measure that there are moments when it comes close to provoking the same reaction, in the same intimate and powerful space.

The story is a sensational one; the tale of a bookish Duke of Vienna who abandons his post, leaving his deputy Angelo to conduct a savage and unpopular crackdown on sexual immorality. When Angelo sentences a young gentleman called Claudio to death for getting his fiancee pregnant, though – and is petitioned for mercy by Claudio’s sister Isabel, a beautiful and brilliant young postulant nun – he himself succumbs to shocking depths of lust and hypocrisy.

What follows is a brilliantly contemporary sequence of scenes about the plight of women who denounce powerful men in public, for sexual offences which they deny. Isabella is gaslit, publicly humiliated and accused of madness, before justice is finally done against Angelo. All of this is brilliantly laid out by Jennifer Dick’s fine cast of five, led by Stephanie Macgregor as Isabel, Sam Stopford as Angelo and James Boal as both Claudio and Angelo’s adviser, Escalus.

The most difficult role, though – that of the evasive Duke himself – falls to Graham Mackay-Bruce, who makes a find job of sustaining one of Shakespeare’s most enigmatic figures to the play’s baffling end. Having set up his savage critique of patriarchy at its worst, Shakespeare hardly seems to know how to resolve the story, as the Duke toys cruelly with Isabel through a long series of closing scenes; but if Dick’s 95-minute version loses some impetus towards the end, there’s no denying the power of an impressively sharp and tightly focused production of one of Shakespeare’s most disturbing plays.

The Merry Wives Of Windsor, by contrast, is the one play in the Shakespeare canon thought to have been written as an unashamed potboiler, designed to exploit the huge popularity of the figure of the fat knight Sir John Falstaff from the Henry IV history plays. Set in the royal playground of Windsor, the play is a merry farce about Falstaff’s failed attempts at adultery with two witty wives of the town, Mistresses Ford and Page. For Bard In The Botanics, though, artistic director Gordon Barr has given this play a total and startling rewrite which goes far beyond his decision to set the play not in Windsor but in Wishaw.

He therefore resurrects Falstaff’s sidekick Ned Poins – not featured in the original at all – as the play’s romantic hero, deftly combines Mistress Page and the innkeeper Mistress Quickly into a single character, and laces this reimagined story with quote upon scene from other Shakespeare plays ranging from As You Like It to Twelfth Night.

Some parts of this radically changed version work better than others, but there’s no gainsaying the fabulous wit and energy of the seven-strong cast. Alan Steele’s Falstaff is a adorable as ever, if sometimes inaudible at the back of the big outdoor crowd; Isabelle Joss and Kyle Gardiner are superb as Mistress Page and Master Slender, the chum on whom she wishes to bestow the hand of her lovely daughter. And the show finally reaches a closing scene so bold and daft – even touching – that the audience can only laugh and cheer; as night falls on the gardens, and on the bold Sir John.

Both shows at the Botanic Gardens, Glasgow, until 27 July