By Robert St. Martin
Los Angeles, CA (The Hollywood Times) 7/25/23 – This past weekend was the final performance of a well-tuned production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure directed by Elina de Santos, co-Artistic Director for Rogue Machine Theatre in a joint production with Ophelia’s Jump Theatre and staged at the Sontag Greek Theatre at the Claremont Colleges, as part of their annual Summer Shakespeare Festival. Often cited as a “problem play,” Measure for Measure despite its comic elements has a deep and disturbing focus on sex as problematic rather than romance leading to happy marriages. In this play written in 1604, the premise is that new laws regarding the legality of sex in the fairly libertine city of Vienna suddenly change the lives of its citizens. This is a subject that still resonates with us today, as the culture wars in the United States and elsewhere tend to focus primarily on human sexual activities.
This fine production with a well-chosen cast of actors brings Shakespeare’s play to life. The outdoor setting at Pomona College’s Greek Theatre was perfect on a balmy summer evening that even featured a rainbow in the sky between two tropical storm clouds. The hour prior to the production was filled with the thoroughly entertaining songs provided by the local musical ensemble called The Merry Wives of Windsor.
Human nature and the law often collide in Measure for Measure. Vincentio, the Duke of Vienna (the eloquent Marc Antonio Pritchett), must leave the city on a diplomatic mission – of dubious destination. Some says he has gone to Rome to see the Pope, others to Poland or even Russia. He instates a strict judge, Angelo (Tedd Larson) to act as his deputy until he returns. He gives instructions to Angelo and his deputy Escalus (Kelly Franett) in a long-winded speech that sounds impressive but conceals the real reasons that Vincentio is leaving Vienna. It seems that Vincentio’s party-boyfriend Lucio is the only one who knows the real dirt on the previous nightly escapades of “the duke of dark corners.”
The next scene opens with Lucio (Spike Pulice) and a group of soldiers bantering on the topics of religion, prostitution, and sexual disease (namely syphilis), as they walk along a Viennese street, hopeful that they will soon find work when war breaks out with Hungary. Mistress Overdone (played gleefully in drag by actor Kelly Franett, who also plays Escalus), the operator of a nearby brothel, interjects to scold them for their flippant talk. She compares their bad behavior to that of the relatively upstanding Claudio (Edward Moravscik), who is, she tells them, soon to be executed for the crime of sleeping with a woman out of wedlock.
POMPEY Yonder man is carried to prison.
BAWD Well, what has he done?
POMPEY A woman.
BAWD But what’s his offense?
POMPEY Groping for trouts in a peculiar river.
BAWD What? Is there a maid with child by him?
One of the gentlemen, Claudio’s friend, Lucio, a “fantastic” or brothel-frequenting fop, is astonished at this news and rushes off. Pompey Bum (played with dexterous sexual ambiguity by Marianne Beacy), an employee of Mistress Overdone, enters as he leaves, bringing more distressing news: Angelo has issued a proclamation that all the brothels in the suburbs are to be torn down.
Claudio is led past Pompey and Overdone by the Provost (Spencer Newman) as they speak, and explains to Lucio what has happened to him. Claudio was engaged to be married to his lover, Juliet (Mariana Ataviera), but, as they had not yet completed the legal technicalities, they were still considered to be unmarried when Juliet became pregnant by him. Angelo, as the interim ruler of the city, has enforced laws that Vincentio had let slide, including an outdated legal clause stating that fornication is punishable by death.
Like many self-professed arbiters of morality before him, Angelo does not apply his restrictions to himself using his power to pursue his own lusts and ambitions. But Angelo has met his match in the truly righteous and persistent Isabella. When the power of the state is twisted to serve false righteousness one woman confronts political corruption and moral hypocrisy to save her brother’s life and bring down the petty tyrant.
The duke, who has remained in Vienna and taken shelter inside a monastery as a friar. He explains to one of his fellow friars why he has given up his role as Duke and delegated legal enforcement of the laws to Angelo, who is considered to be an upstanding, “precise” and rather puritanical type but with a sadist streak. Says the Duke – now donning the garb of a friar:
We have strict statutes and most biting laws,
The needful bits and curbs to headstrong weeds,
Which for this fourteen years we have let slip,
Even like an o’ergrown lion in a cave
That goes not out to prey.
The duke in his disguises as a friar now begins to meddle in the affairs of state, as a supposed confessor to prisoners in a prison which Angelo is busy filling with bawds and fops. Hearing this, Lucio leaves to visit Claudio’s sister, the novice nun Isabella (Jenny Lockwood), and asks her to intercede with Angelo on Claudio’s behalf. Following Lucio’s revelation to her, Isabella quickly obtains an audience with Angelo, and pleads for mercy on Claudio’s behalf. As they exchange arguments, Angelo is increasingly overcome with his desire for Isabella, and he eventually offers her a deal: Angelo will spare Claudio’s life if Isabella yields him her virginity. Isabella refuses and threatens to publicly expose his lechery, but he points out that no one will believe her word over his reputation.
Meanwhile the low-life comic character of wily Pompey Bum teases the rather dim pimp Elbow about the effects of the sex crack-down by Angelo. It all comes down to the issue of sex outside of legal heterosexual marriage. Pompey has an interesting exchange with Escalus, the wiser deputy to Angelo:
ESCALUS Troth, and your bum is the greatest thing
about you, so that in the beastliest sense you are
Pompey the Great. Pompey, you are partly a bawd,
Pompey, howsoever you color it in being a tapster,
are you not? Come, tell me true. It shall be the
better for you.
ESCALUS How would you live, Pompey? By being a
bawd? What do you think of the trade, Pompey? Is it
a lawful trade?
POMPEY If the law would allow it, sir.
ESCALUS But the law will not allow it, Pompey, nor it
shall not be allowed in Vienna.
POMPEY Does your Worship mean to geld and splay all
the youth of the city?
ESCALUS No, Pompey.
POMPEY Truly, sir, in my poor opinion, they will to ’t
then. If your Worship will take order for the drabs
and the knaves, you need not to fear the bawds.
At this point, the repartee is reminiscence of the witty banter of Shakespeare’s early romantic comedies. However, the enforcement of Vienna’s new sex laws presages dark times ahead.
It is the Duke in disguise as a friar who councils Lucio to act as the go-between between Angelo and the novice nun Isabella (Jenny Lockwood). Hearing this, Lucio leaves to visit Claudio’s sister Isabella and asks her to intercede with Angelo on Claudio’s behalf. Following Lucio’s revelation to her, Isabella quickly obtains an audience with Angelo, and pleads for mercy on Claudio’s behalf.
As they exchange arguments, Angelo is increasingly overcome with his desire for Isabella, and he eventually offers her a deal: Angelo will spare Claudio’s life if Isabella yields him her virginity. Isabella refuses and threatens to publicly expose his lechery, but he points out that no one will believe her word over his reputation. To himself in a soliquoy, he reveals his inner turmoil:
What dost thou, or what art thou, Angelo?
Dost thou desire her foully for those things
That make her good? O, let her brother live.
Thieves for their robbery have authority
When judges steal themselves. What, do I love her
That I desire to hear her speak again
And feast upon her eyes? What is ’t I dream on?
O cunning enemy that, to catch a saint,
With saints dost bait thy hook. Most dangerous
Is that temptation that doth goad us on
To sin in loving virtue. Never could the strumpet
With all her double vigor, art and nature,
Once stir my temper, but this virtuous maid
Subdues me quite. Ever till now
When men were fond, I smiled and wondered how.
Meanwhile the Duke still disguised as a friar begins to visit the prison and there he talks to the condemned Claudio, who has been sentenced to death the next day by Angelo. He tells Claudio that he must prepare for death. The Duke with the good-hearted Provost (Spencer Newman) who oversees the prison, suggests that Angelo’s jilted former fiancée, Mariana (Mariluna Beacy), could take Isabella’s place. Although the bed trick succeeds, Angelo orders Claudio beheaded anyway.
Modern responses to the play show how it can be transformed by its reception in present culture to evoke continuing fascination. To some, the duke (the government) seems meddlesome; to others, he is properly imposing moral standards. Angelo and Isabella’s encounter exemplifies sexual harassment. Others see a woman’s right to control her body in Isabella’s choice between her virginity and her brother’s life.
The duke saves Claudio, but he tells Isabella that Claudio is dead. Technically an elaborate “deus ex machina,” the Duke as a friar in disguise plots with the Provost to substitute a condemned murderer named Barnardino (another role played by Mariana Ataviera). Barnardino who has only 18 lines in the play is the counter-balance to the endless chatter of the Duke/friar: Constantly drunk, he does not care about the laws of Vienna, or whether he lives or dies. In this production, Barnardino’s resistance to authority is amplified by the production having him vehemently yell back in Spanish at the prison authorities. The comedy threatens to undercut the seriousness of Claudio’s predicament as he is due to be hanged. Eventually the head of a different prisoner is found that cane be presented to Angelo.
In the fairly brief Act V of Measure for Measure, the Duke’s return is announced and he enters the city of Vienna with great pomp. Immediately Isabella shows up to complain about Angelo’s act that ended her brother’s life. At first, the Duke is reluctant to blame Angelo, even though Isabella pleads most eloquently.
Haste still pays haste, and leisure answers leisure,
Like doth quit like, and measure still for measure.
The duke, resuming his identity, sentences Angelo to wed Mariana and then be put to death. But Mariana and Isabella plead for Angelo’s life. But the tables are soon turned his former fiancée Mariana asks for justice and Isabella rushes to join Mariana in that request. Isabella is shocked to discover that her brother Claudio is still alive and reunited with his wife Juliet. The Duke dispenses justice in his odd way, and so forces his old party-boy friend Lucio to marry the very prostitute who he made pregnant with child.
Of course, the strangest thing of all is that the Duke who apparently has more lust in his veins that we are supposed to know, then offers marriage to the former novice nun Isabella. This may seem like a very qualified “happy ending,” but it is what makes Measure for Measure arguably a true “problem play.” The play’s main themes include justice, “morality and mercy in Vienna.” and the dichotomy between corruption and purity: “some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” Mercy and virtue prevail, as the play does not end tragically, with virtues such as compassion and forgiveness being exercised at the end of the production.
For most information about Ophelia’s Jump Theatre and their upcoming productions in the Claremont/Upland area, go to: https://opheliasjump.org