Summary 
Clever modernization of Measure for Measure to 1894 Vienna, enhanced with the color schemes and artwork of Schiele, Degas, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Prostitutes dance a can-can but are garishly made-up and grotesque. Well-realized central conflict between Isabella and a germophobic Angelo is further complicated by the moral ambiguity of the Duke. Strong performances, imaginative concepts, excellent direction.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set and lights by Michael Philippi. Costumes by Nan Cibula-Jenkins. Sound and music by Michael Bodeen. Choreographed by Jim Corti. Fights by Richard Raether.
Cast
Kim Ataide (Mariana), Tony Dobrowolski (Elbow), Ed Dubbs (Abhorson), Julie Greenberg (Juliet), Shelton Key (Justice), Jeffrey Lieber (Claudio), Michael McAlister (Pompey), William Meisle (Duke), Lia Mortensen (Isabella), Scott Parkinson (Froth), Ernest Perry, Jr. (Escalus), A.C. Smith (Provost), Craig Spidle (Friar Thomas/Barnardine), Stephen Trovillion (Lucio), Karen Vaccaro (Mistress Overdone/Francisca), Greg Vinkler (Angelo).
Analysis
Shakespeare Repertory's production of Measure for Measure is updated to 1894 Vienna, and the designers emphasize the Victorian prudishness of the time as a thin veneer over seamy decadence. Garishly made-up prostitutes and transvestites dance a raucous Parisian can-can in the production's early moments, accompanied by piano and hoots and hollers from their clientele. Brightly foot lit, the dancers' colorful costumes and heavily painted faces seem grotesque and distorted, their lurid appearance inspired by the post-Impressionistic art of Edgar Degas and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The prostitutes pantomime explicit sexual acts with a slew of customers while their madam, an obese and nightmarishly made-up Mistress Overdone, herself in the midst of an oral sex act with Lucio, sings a comically carnal perversion of Mariana's "take those lips away" song from 4.1. A darker aspect of sexual licentiousness is a fleeting - and quite disturbing - image of a priest molesting a young boy, then quickly walking away while the kneeling child contorts in shame and horror. The scene presages this production's emphasis on the self-serving abuse of power and has a distinct connection with modern headlines.
The scenic design is also influenced by turn of the century European artists. Long translucent drapes of pastel orange obscure the back quarter of the thrusting, stepped stage, which is large and unadorned. At left-center stage is a spiral staircase that twists upward to a second-level landing that is murky purple, and the entire stage is framed in darkly blotched blood-red. The harshness and sense of disease and decay within the set design reflect the physical distortion and emotional torment of paintings by Viennese artist Egon Schiele, and the color scheme and economy of means recall the poster art and paintings of Toulouse-Lautrec. Similarly, the visual presentation of the prison is simple but striking. A solitary, glaring white light from the lower-middle of the upstage wall provides the only illumination as prisoners moan and groan in sprawled, twisted positions all across the stage, some within a large center trap. The backlit guards and friars who move about the prison appear as creeping shadows and featureless forms. Duke Vincentio's abdication is also made more effective by lighting technique. As he exits the stage, the lights go out - literally and figuratively - with the well-seeming Angelo left alone and empowered within a yellow spotlight with Escalus.
The contrast between Angelo's severity and the Duke's lenient ineptitude is established early. The production begins with two solemn nuns walking through dark Vienna streets. They are accosted by a gang of drunken thugs, and both of them are harassed and groped, while the Duke and Escalus can only watch helplessly from the landing above. An alarm is sounded and policemen appear, but the criminals escape amid the pandemonium. Later, after the Duke's supposed departure, Angelo and Escalus are similarly lit upon the landing, and they witness a quiet, almost sentimental transaction between a prostitute and her customer. Amid whistle shrieks, both the woman and the man are quickly arrested and hauled away by swarming police, much to Angelo's satisfaction.
A highlight of this Measure for Measure is the portrayal of Angelo. Impeccably attired in black formalwear, complete with tails, the proxy is stern, impatient, and dismissive. Angelo, obsessed with cleanliness, continually washes and dries his hands over a round glass basin suspended within a curving wire stand. His later Pilate-like guilt is foreshadowed (and his earlier transgression alluded to) in a brief scene preceding Isabella's first appearance. Alone on the second-level landing, Angelo's intense scrubbing of his hands with a small brush is spot-lit and amplified, then darkened and silenced as the lights come up onstage; Francisca and her nuns become visible, scrubbing the convent floor with the same fervor as with which Angelo incessantly scours his hands. When Isabella makes her subsequent entrance and speaks with Francisca, the audience is aware that Angelo is already above her, lurking in the darkness, trying to cleanse himself.
After Isabella's entreaties for mercy in 2.2, Angelo's temptation is revealed through tics, twitches, and nervous giggles. He splashes water from the basin (now onstage) haphazardly into his face and hair, and he kneels awkwardly in a failed attempt at prayer. When Isabella returns for his decision in 2.4, Angelo is suddenly concerned about his appearance, and he rapidly combs his hair with a shaking hand and nervously drops the comb to the floor. When he assaults Isabella at the end of the scene, it is with repugnantly complete physical domination. His body bends over hers from behind, and his hands paw her arms, her breasts, and her loins. He finally reaches inside her wimple to stroke her hair, and he ceases only when he reaches a sexual climax. Angelo leaves Isabella hunched and shocked, physically and emotionally violated. His lack of sincere repentance is revealed in the production's final moment. After his forced marriage to Mariana, the supposedly penitent Angelo starts to stride off-stage, then hesitates and pauses for his bride to follow. When she does, he irritably removes her hand from his arm and, with a scowl, exits ahead of her.
Angelo endures his "trial" before the Duke in the protracted final act with shifting eyes, frequent throat-clearing, and an anxious wringing of hands that recalled Richard Nixon to one Chicago newspaper reviewer. The entire stage is now revealed, the previously concealed upstage area lit in an almost golden light, although wires and brickwork and theatrical machinery are visible; all is exposed literally, as all will soon be exposed figuratively, by the Duke. The trial is held before a tribunal consisting of a half-dozen formally attired "gentlemen" carrying canes. They march in a silent, stately procession through the audience and across the stage, passing through the drapes to take seats as if in a jury box in the newly revealed area. Initially, the tribunal seems to be comprised of Angelo's political cronies, and the men laugh as if on cue, tap their canes sharply on the floor to support Angelo and punctuate his remarks, and murmur in disdain as Isabella makes her charges against him. But as Angelo's guilt becomes obvious, they pound their canes loudly in judgment, then stand and stalk out as they came, now with Angelo on his knees before the Duke, his body twisted in shame.
Director Barbara Gaines' emphases on sexual decadence and the abuse of authority tend to overwhelm the few moments of humor in the play, making the scenes of physical comedy oddly incongruous. Of the comic characters, Elbow fares the best, thanks to a slapstick portrayal, stiffly wearing flood-pants and white socks and sleeves at mid-forearm. He sports heavy, black, round spectacles and an absurd handlebar mustache, and his speech is nasal, clipped, and precisely incorrect. A foppish, chortling Lucio is highly mannered and well-dressed, and the production's biggest laugh occurs when the Duke, as Friar Lodowick, sends Lucio off-stage with a kind benediction, but his sign of the cross suddenly converts into a rude hand gesture. Also creditable are the depictions of Barnardine, bellowing and hung-over, straw all through his straggly, long gray hair, and Pompey, earnestly obsequious and exceptionally well-spoken for a panderer. Less successful is the portrayal of Froth, whose writhing gastric distress and scatalogical antics - due to his consumption of Mrs. Elbow's stewed prunes - soon become tiresome.
Isabella provides a dramatic counterpoint for the serpentine Angelo. The delicate character's rapid, eloquent delivery convincingly reveals to both Angelo and the audience Isabella's intelligence and the passionate sincerity of her convictions. She conveys difficult emotions throughout the play, from the helplessness of victimization, to fury at being defiled, to the unselfishness of her final plea for mercy. The complexity of her emotional state is vividly portrayed in her prison scene with Claudio. Isabella speaks and moves about in fits and starts, determined in her righteousness but guilt-ridden because of its consequences, and still traumatized from her encounter with Angelo. After moments of genuine sorrow and tenderness ("that is my brother"), Isabella suddenly becomes furious, and she screams at Claudio ("die, perish") and rushes from the stage. Claudio falls to his knees, calling his sister's name in pleading panic, and the stage goes black to powerfully complete the first half of the production.
Claudio's appeals to Isabella bear a startling resemblance to Angelo's illicit proposal; her brother also looms behind her, his hands on her shoulders, speaking into her ear. The Duke's eventual proposal of marriage is unsettling, although it at first evokes laughter from the audience due to its unexpectedness and the glibness with which it is broached and then dismissed ("fitter time for that"). With no prior indication of physical chemistry between the Duke and Isabella, and in light of a considerable age difference between the two actors, the goodness of the Duke, as well as his motives throughout the play, suddenly become suspect. The "what is yours is mine" speech, for example, is delivered with menacing creepiness, and one wonders if Lucio's earlier depiction of the Duke as depraved is really as slanderous and untrue as it first seems.
The realization that the Duke is not as benevolent and unselfish as he had seemed is underscored in the production's final image. Once the myriad conflicts are (ostensibly) resolved, and all the other characters have left the stage, the Duke approaches Isabella from behind, as both Angelo and Claudio did previously. Isabella stands rigidly and unwillingly motionless. The Duke, with cold deliberateness and a complete lack of affection, then pulls the wimple completely from her hair, and the lights fade as the production concludes. The entire complexion of Measure for Measure is altered with this interpretation: within the context of the abuse of authority, and in light of the Duke's disguise as a friar and the frequent references to his "divine" character, there is a disturbing correlation between Isabella and the Duke and the earlier image of the young boy molested by the priest.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.12, No.2, Spring 1994.