Measure For Measure
At Shakespeare in the Park. New York, New York.
Whores, pimps. a beheading, threatened executions, sexual bartering, puss-filled boils, a drunk going to prison, and a nun almost getting naked-- it was just a regular Tuesday night in the city that never sleeps.
"Measure For Measure", definatly one of Shakespeare's darkest comedies, took the stage with full force. Minions of death wearing Donny Darko bunny masks and wiggling black dildos crawled onto the stage to greet a man robed in the black cloak and the beaked mask of the traditional doctor tending on plague victims.
From a trap door rises a bed with a writhing mass heaped under a blanket. Death draws back the sheet to reveal layer bodies, all riddled with purpled lesions. They crawl and claw and creep off the bed and stagger forward, threatening the audience with their disease. (See the left side of this page for information on the plague mask and preventatives).
This is the stuff that Duke Vincentio's dreams are made of. Awaking from his nightmare of the Bubonic Plague which is not merely contained within his dreams but runs rampant through the streets of Vienna, Vincento decides to escape the kingdom and leaves his trusted counselor, Angelo, to rule the people in his absence.
Angelo's first order? Execute all philanders, abolish all the brothels, and punish any who have succumbed to lust.
Claudio is abducted by soldiers from the bordello of Mistress Overdone, and is convicted to die because he indulged in his finacee Juliet's little nothings and begot on her a little nusiance (i.e. a baby).
Looking to achieve salvation, Claudio calls for his sister, Isabella, a nun on the eve of taking her vows, to protest his innocence to Angelo.
Isabella, played by Danai Gurira, is having her hair shorn in preparation to take her holy vows, when she is told of her brother's immenient demise. In a slinky white dress (long sleeved, high-necked, floor brushing-- covering but conforming), with her rosarie wrapped about her waist, Isabella goes to Angelo to beg for her brother's life.
Angelo, cold and disciplined at first with his "blood [of] very snow-broth", begins to loosen and heat in her presence, and after sending her away to call again the next morning, he leans upon his desk, his body weak and trembling-- "Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue: never could the strumpet with all her double vigour, art and nature, once stir my temper; but this virtuous maid subdues me quite."
He proclaimed to rid Vienna of its lasiviousness, it's smut, and quivering sin, and will use Claudio "to make him an example [and make] his life fall forfeit." And it is because he repels this obvious outlet of lust so adamently that he begins to desire a lady who's very being is of virtue and her body ordained for God. Angelo wants her because she embodies his ideals, but he pervertedly wants to ravish her and so usurp that goodness.
To obtain her, he plots to tear up her brother's death warrant if she will surrender her flesh to him. When he offers her this proposal, Isabella weeps for her brother and her body, wanting to surrender neither to their deaths.
Duke Vincentio, disguised as a friar, learns of Angelo's plans and uses his divine guise to survey the inner workings of Isabella and Claudio.
Claudio, when told by his sister of Claudio's sinister deal, pleads for her to abandon her resisitance in order "to let [Claudio] live: [for] what sin [is it] to save a brother's life, bature dispenses with the deed so far that it becomes a virtue."
Terrified of death and the mistress death, Claudio tries to convince Isabella that to submit her body would not be sin but would be Christ-like in her sacrifice, crucified to Angelo's bed.
Isabella, wrought with indecision, is approached by Duke Vincentio still in his costume of friar Lodowick, who tells her that she "may most uprighteously do a poor wronged lady a merited benefit; redeem [her] brother from the angry law; do no stain to [her] own gracious person; and much please the absent duke." Knowing well that he can step up as ruler at any point and end these troubles, Vincentio decides to have his fun, and see if he can use Isabella as his instrument to set wrongs right, and trick Angelo in the process.Vincentio tells Isabella of the maid Mariana who was engaged to Angelo but when her brother's ship was wrecked and her fortune lost, Angelo turned abandoned her and denied her marriage, leaving her a lady most deject and wretched.
The nun and the false friar plot to seduce Angelo into bed, pretending that it will be Isabella who he will indulge in, but instead put Mariana in her stead, and thereby gain Angelo's aquittance for Claudio, Mariana will enjoy the man who should have been her groom, and Isabella will suffer no loss to her person or her spirit.
Mariana is found dipping her feet into a pool as a young falsetto sings to her of fickle affections from the balcony. Vincentio as the Friar approches and splashes about, leaving the weight of the matter and the rouse to be introduced by Isabella.
Still in love with the man who wronged her (a typically Shakespearean theme), Mariana agrees and that night, Angelo, thinking he is will possess Isabella, greedily covets the woman he once discarded.
In an unwritten scene, Isabella, half undressed sits on the bed with Mariana and exchanged a veil. Angelo, unaware of the switch, enters once Isabella has left, and climbs onto the matress as the lighting fades to a purpled black.
Unaware of his snare, Angelo goes back on his word, and sends a message that Claudio killed before sunrise of that very night.
The Duke Vincentio, already at the prison to see Claudio's pardon safely carried through, intercepts the hasty death warrant, and removes his spectacles and hood to show himself the sovereign of Vienna.
Vincento orders that a severed head labeled as Claudio's should be sent to Angelo, thus making it seem as if the cruel ruler has succeeded. Vincento commands that Barnardine, a prison should be the face of the operation.
Now here is where the play excelled, I think.
Pompey, a brothel bartender, unwillingly turned executioner's right-hand man, calls into the dungeon pit (an opened trap door) that Barnardine "must rise and be hanged...[and at least to] awake till [he is] executed and then sleep afterwards."
Barnardine shouts drunkenly that he will not for he is sleeping. After Pompey's sheepish attempts, they finally lure the drunkard from his lair with a bottle of green-bottled beer. Endlessly intoxicated and excited by the fresh liquor, Barnadine runs about the stage, yelling like a frat boy at a kegger and headbanging.
It was the comedy of this part I loved the most. The madness that was neither strained nor unbelievable. The actors truly captured the farcical silliness of Shakespeare's darker comedies.
