Matt Pereira
This month sees the staging of Guildford Shakespeare Company’s 40th production. To mark the occasion, the super-talented team is producing Measure for Measure, Shakespeare’s unflinching examination of sexual harassment and corruption.
DETAILS
Venue: Holy Trinity Church, High Street, Guildford
Dates: 3 February - 24 February 2019
OUR VERDICT
I am a huge fan of Guildford Shakespeare Company and never pass up the opportunity to see the actors at work in the surroundings of the sublime Holy Trinity Church. I was, therefore, very excited to be invited to the company’s 40th production, Measure for Measure - one of the lesser produced plays in the Shakespearean canon and one of my particular favourites.
Written in the early years of the 17th century, the play with its themes of power, lust, corruption and the role of women is definitely one for our times. In the light of #MeToo and the many sexual abuse accusations of the past few years, the play seems sadly all too relevant. Indeed my companion for the evening remarked, “It’s depressing to see that nothing has changed in the past 400 years”.
The action centres on the city of Vienna, where the beleaguered Duke Vincento hands over the power of his vice-ridden city to the puritan hardliner Lord Angelo. Meanwhile, a young lover Claudio is jailed for getting his girlfriend pregnant – a sentence that Angelo later commutes to execution. Desperate to stay alive, Claudio asks his sister Isabella, a novice at a convent, to go to Angelo and plead for his life. She agrees only to be told by the hypocritical lawmaker that her brother will go free if she agrees to sleep with him. After a plot is devised swapping the innocent Isabella for Angelo’s fiancée, the Duke (who has been watching proceedings disguised as a friar) returns to restore order and justice, freeing Claudio, imprisoning Angelo and marrying Isabella.
This production is, as they say, a play of two halves. In the first, the main male parts are all played by women (the women by men) and vice versa in the second, compelling the audience to watch the whole play (albeit condensed) twice. Director and adaptor Charlotte Conquest has done a wonderful job and the conceit (which was used similarly in a fabulous version at the Donmar Warehouse last year) worked very well.
Hannah Edwards and Graeme Dalling were equally superb in the alternate ingénue/seducer roles. Yet what was very interesting was the audience reaction to the crucial scene. As an Alexis Carrington-esque power-dressed, no-nonsense woman of substance, the audience remained impassive if not a little amused as Angela (Edwards) writhed against the timid, bespectacled Isabello; contrast to the second half where there feeling of revulsion was palpable at the thought the viewers may be about to witness an attempted rape.
This was a truly accomplished production, featuring atmospheric lighting by Mark Dymock and clever sound design by Matt Eaton. The church was as always, one of the stars of the show, with a multi-levelled set brilliantly created by Neil Irish, that enabled the action to be enjoyed from all areas of the auditorium.
GSC is a terrific local theatre company, which richly deserves all its fans and supporters. If you are in the market for some accessible, top-notch drama in a simply superb setting, then this production is most definitely for you.