The Toronto Theatre Review: HOUSE + BODY’s Measure For Measure

by Ross

They gather together around a long split white table, filled to overflowing with black sound props and four microphones, wired up to the ceiling for amplification and effect. The crew of five arrives, ushered in by the Sound Tech and Radio host leader, Matthew Graham, played solidly by Danté Prince (Stratford’s Much Ado About Nothing), who will lead them through their radio paces. He gives us the “snap, snap, snap” at the four microphones as the crew of radio actors, played well and clear by a band of fabulously talented stage actors, size each other up and settle in. We see the tension between the actors, played by actors, and we wonder where this electricity is going to lead us. And parallel the Shakespearian tale as Matthew, our radio host, starts it all off with a “here we go…4…3…2…1″.

With that strong set-up, we are off to the races. He meta-introduces us all to the play and the interesting and adept formula that HOUSE + BODY has crafted for their stage production, produced in association with Crow’s Theatre, of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, a new adaptation by its director Christopher Manousos (H+B’s Marry Me Marry Me Marry Me Marry Me) designed and reformated “after William Shakespeare“. It’s an energizing and enlightening beginning, framed inside a modern sound studio, where five expert actors playing actors take on all the wild and wicked characters that live inside Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure for a live radio streamed presentation. It’s a formidable and fantastic formula that radio-focuses us in on the actors’ voices and the poetic words and phrases embedded most dutifully in one of Shakespeare’s most ambiguously toned “problem plays.” But that’s not all. There is a young actress who has just arrived, rushed and a bit frazzled, to step in at the last minute to play the leading role of Isabella. With no rehearsal or time to prepare, she must find her way through the high-stakes and high-pressure environment, but “things get complicated when the action off-stage becomes as heated as they are onstage.”

I’m not so sure about the last bit, to be honest, but the rest is certainly all there, played out live for their radio audience (and for us). The reading is determined and well-paced, with all those complex tones that shift somewhat abruptly from comic material to dark psychological drama being delivered in abundance, blending comedy and a tinge of tragedy with ease to fill out the program. But in Manousos’s clever adaptation, the epic and ingenious bipolar qualities of the play are amplified beyond the scripted text and into the finely crafted pauses, ‘backstage’ dynamics, and interval advertisements made by this deliciously game gaggle of actors. The Purity vodka and the sharing of shampoo bottle adverts don’t always pan out as expertly as one might hope for, especially in the lips that lock together in the surprising twist that takes us to intermission. Those framings enliven and excite, mixing and mashing it all up alongside these on and off-air asides and telling looks. Determined to find some parallel symbolic layers in their acting characters, they dig into inside moments and actual text that float out ideas around justice, “morality and mercy“, and the abstract dichotomy and hypocrisy that lives and breathes most clearly inside corruption and purity: “some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall“.

It doesn’t always run smoothly, as the radio host sets it all in motion with spoken stage directions and the telling of the headings emphatically into one of the microphones. “Act one, scene one,” he proclaims, after he introduces us to his gathered cast and what parts they have been assigned to play. He will be playing numerous characters, he tells us, including Lucio, Claudio, Pompey, and Others; followed by the handsome actor and director, Dalton Eddy (Sébastien Heins) who will suitably play Angelo and Others; the beautiful film star and partner to the director, Naomi Wills-Prior (Katherine Gauthier) will portray Mistress Overdone, Mariana, Escalus, and Other; the director’s good friend, Cope Adams (Jamie Cavanagh) will play The Duke and Others; and the newly invited Chloë Gables (Beck Lloyd) will play Isabella, a surprised Elbow, and Others. And with that formulation set beautifully before us, let the games begin.

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, directed and adapted by the inventive Manousos, goes radiowave live and engaging, thanks to the focused solid work by lighting designer Chris Malkowski (ARC/Crow’s Gloria) and sound design by Riel Reddick-Stevens (Black Theatre Workshop’s Everyday She Rose). Matched with sound gimmicks and the splitting of the tables, Duke Vincento, we are told, after seemingly falling down a faith rabbit hole, decides, quite suddenly, to transfer his judicial power over to the high-minded, sanctimonious, and puritanically pious Angelo (Heins) and his assistant, Escalus (Gauthier). The two are enlisted to watch over his Viennese kingdom for reasonings that seem a bit murky and unclear, even in Shakespeare’s text, and not just in the way they are being presented.

Something about this play always makes me lean back from it, especially in the beginning, as it takes some conscious patience to engage and stay engaged. The language, many say (not just me), seems to be of a few different minds. Many suggest that some of the scripted parts of Measure that survive to this day are not actually Shakespeare’s but rather the product of a reformulated, edited revision by English Jacobean playwright and poet, Thomas Middleton, sometime after Shakespeare’s death. Herein lies some of the challenges with the complex language of Shakespeare and his problem play. Within the text, especially in the first few scenes of Act One, many passages, as perceived by scholars, basically sound like gibberish to our modern ear and sensibility, causing a ‘disconnect’ between the written text and the hoops an actor must jump through to present these words to a modern audience. One can feel the muddle we find ourselves in during the first Act, but luckily for us, this cast drives us through the fog and out into the sun before we know it, saving us from the murky muddle and allowing us to join them in this inventive journey.

Wisely, this production finds its sparkle as it gets into its main thrust, allowing us to hear it clearly from Manousos’s unique and different framing: as a radio play sent out live into the airwaves for mass consumption. Yet, despite that alteration, it still takes some time to really find our way in, even if we are well-versed with the tale being presented to us by HOUSE + BODY. But when the light does click on, about four or five scenes in, we can’t help but be captivated completely by the playfully robust and darkly humorous tale of betrayal, mercy, virtue, and forgiveness. It’s energetic and insightful, full of side glances and manic gesturings that tell tales underneath the story being presented, and even though many aren’t played out fully enough, especially the surprise Act One closing, the whole atmosphere remains charged and exciting.

The Duke states he is leaving Angelo in charge so he may clamp down on the rampant vice that has grown under his watch, yet he remains in disguise to watch over what transpires in his absence. Yet, somewhere in this plot point, I couldn’t muster up the trust and understanding in his logistical and moral arguments. The Duke, as played with great humor and charm by Jamie Cavanagh (Assembly’s The Huns), is quite the complex soul, toying with people’s emotional state as if it’s all a big morality game. He has his reasons for each deception, or so he says, but for this spectator, he left me feeling suspicious of his ways and means. What are we to make of the Duke? We can’t quite understand it all. In one way, he’s like a misguided practical jokester or a paranoid protector and ruler, that sometimes goes too far with his questionable charade, manipulating and correcting others with good intent, while his personal participation and power to intercede is left unchallenged as if he’s allowed to play this game without consent or objection.

This play, first performed in 1604, explores the complex balance between justice, mercy, and virtue.  The wondrously intuitive Katherine Gauthier (Crow’s Theatre’s Bad Roads) as his dutiful and thoughtful assistant, Escalus, has an understanding of mercy and forgiveness that few have in this strange and incongruent play. It is Escalus who states, quite elegantly, that “some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall”, and in this, we have the essence of what’s at stake. Angelo, played sternly and captivatingly by Sébastien Heins (Outside the March’s No Save Points), is by no means a true villain. He’s handsomely arrogant and far too sure of himself morally, yet he’s also only a man repressed and then unhinged by a sexual awakening caused by the angelic sight of Isabella, played effectively with wit and grace by Beck Lloyd (Theatre Rusticle’s The Tempest). We see his conflict, but we also don’t forgive him for his conduct, which is a difficult balance to create, yet Heins finds his way gallantly through without trying too hard for us to get behind him.

Isabella, you see, has come to Angelo to plead for the life of her imprisoned brother, Claudio, portrayed with a radio-host wave by Prince, whom Angelo has decided to make an example of. Angelo has charged him with a long-disused law that punishes sexual activity outside of marriage with death.  In a timely parallel to modern politics, Angelo, going against all that he publicly stands for, stricken with an immoral desire for Isabella, proposes a Faustian deal to her. He will spare her brother’s life if Isabella gives up her virtue and sleeps with him. It brings to mind so many politicians and religious zealots who condemn others for indecent acts that, as it turns out, they are committing themselves. Hypocrisy is alive and well in both H+B’s radio play and modern-day politics. 

Filling out this wild play within a play are numerous moments of emotional engagement and comedic brilliance. One such master is Lloyd as the topsy-turvy Constable Elbow, who makes the ‘thrown-in without preparation’ ridiculous even more so, messing with the biased righteousness of the law by turning it on its head. So does the dead man walking-to-be, Barnardine (Gauthier), whose rational defense against dying is a wondrous one, refusing to cooperate in a beheading on the day it is needed because he’s basically tired, hungover, and not wanting to get up out of bed. It’s dastardly funny and compelling all at the same time, as we watch him mess with one of the many convoluted plots hatched by the disguised Duke. But as luck would have it, another head becomes available, without a soul being beheaded. What good fortune.

The play and this provocative production, filling the faux airwaves with its wonderful inventiveness and energetic enlightenment, does a fantastic job of balancing all the intricate layers of a play within a play about a radio production presenting a Shakespeare play. It fantastically forges forward on all levels, guided by a meticulous radio host and his determined band of excellent coconspiritores, all played by a crew of thrillingly ingenious actors willing to tackle this epic play and the framing of its presentation. This Measure for Measure captivates in its playful multi-dimensional formulations, but it also quite readily brings to mind our own highly polarized world where religion and law are too wrapped up together without a shred of reason or mercy.

Shakespeare seems to want to say that the law, without forgiveness and thoughtful mercy, is too harsh and uncaring. Marianna, lovingly played by Gauthier, after being wronged by Angelo, finds her way into our hearts when she becomes the one to beg for the life of the man who, of all the characters in Measure for Measure, deserves his punishment (just ask my theatre companion, who believes wholeheartedly that Angleo should have been punished for his hypocracy and betrayal quite harshly). Yet, Marianna asks for forgiveness from Isabella and leniency from the Duke, stating that we all are fallible and need mercy and kindness over harsh judgments. It’s a touching ending for a beautifully crafted, inventive production of a complex and problematic play. And this idea is matched quite playfully by the radio acting partners’ thoughtful request to the newbie fellow actor after the microphones have been turned off. Repression, lust, hypocrisy, and disturbing sexual politics have never been so much fun or more wildly brought forth. So tune that dial to the right radio frequency and settle down for this faux-radio broadcast sent out live and lively from this wisely crafted and entertaining production at the Crow’s Theatre, Toronto.