So last night, I made it to the closing night of the
Manchester Shakespeare Company's inaugural production,
Desperate Measures (
Facebook).
An update of one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays,
Measure for Measure, the authors here had a lot to deal with.
M4M is famous for gender politics that haven't exactly stood the test of time and a conclusion more fitting to a tragedy than a comedy. Like
The Taming of the Shrew and
The Merchant of Venice, it's got a lot to do with who you make your victims: in Shakespeare's day, "shrewish" women and Jews might have been
acceptable targets, but that's changed. In
M4M, a nun's vows are famously left at the whim of the individual director, and a bad guy who would have been a cackling, moustache-twirling psycho in a less subtle work is a weak and tormented fool being steadily corrupted by his increasing power.
In this case,
Desperate Measures was
exactly the less subtle work I was looking for.
The world was shifted sideways to the possible present if the Thatcher government had never been ousted. Rampant inflation, the balkanisation of the UK, a police force gutted to cut costs, the death penalty reinstated for crimes that only exist in the twisted minds of the worst of
Daily Mail readers (homosexuality, littering, marrying a foreigner); the directors' view of the future is a bleak one. Some of these changes serve the useful functions of making the story possible in the modern 'Mancia', but others are clear political commentary.
Most of the characters were kept in-archetype, but appropriately updated to keep their concerns relevant to the present day. The Duke became an incompetent and slovenly (but well-intentioned) Mayor, the bane of his hypercompetent PA's life; his "Coalition Partner" Nicky Angelo became an appalling misogynist sleaze who embraced the corruptions of power with gusto; the nun Isabella, in the most interesting change, became human-rights lawyer Issy (Laura Littlewood). Claude (Adam Vinten), the victim at the centre of the farce, was very little changed - except that he was gay, which would prove a plot-point.
The changes to plot and setting sufficed to keep the storyline in its original mould, and in that respect, it was still relevantly Shakespeare.
I shan't rehash it here: it is, after all, part of the canon. But it was also Shakespeare in another sense: most of the actors - particularly Alex Miller (Nicky Angelo) - were clearly enjoying playing to a crowd. And not in that dull-eyed, cynical way of the grinning actors at Disneyland; no, this production's actors just looked out through the fourth wall and winked knowingly.
My first complaint is about that fourth wall. A lot of pre-modern theatre was heavy on the audience participation, using the audience as impromptu choruses and occasional scapegoats - and if I had a single serious complaint about this production, it's that it kept... straining at its bounds. Nicky Angelo's press conference
screamed out audience involvement, but resisted the urge to actually cross the fourth wall. Audience members pre-empted dialogue once or twice, but went ignored - when, given the general mood of the piece, the polemical simplicity of much of the dialogue and the actors' obvious enthusiasm, it might have fit better to just let them in. Next time, use the audience. We want to be used!
My second - and it's much less serious - is that in one place in particular, the story stayed a bit too faithful. In the original, the nun Isabella refuses to give her virginity for her brother, believing that to do so would damn them both to hell, which she fears more than her brother losing his mortal life. In the end she works out a clever trick, but he betrays her anyway, saving the news that it wasn't her he slept with for the final scene. It's important that Isabella keep that secret as long as she can.
Desperate Measures had no such real reason for her to keep the secret - a lot of conflict could have been resolved within the first ten minutes of the second Act if Issy had simply revealed her blackmail material then. It would, perhaps, have pushed the story in a different direction, but as any writer for roleplayers knows, sometimes you've just got to roll with what makes sense for the PCs to do.
3MT's 'rude mechanicals' change scenes using an innovative arrangement of hinged, revolving flats, and do so in
awesome style, playing a crew of hooded chavs with their own comically violent storyline. Best scene-transitions I've ever seen, and a style decision I'll be proselytising at length.
This style of theatre, where you're not afraid to laugh, or even
to be the only person laughing, has a lot to recommend it. It's fun, it's informal, and while it's important to have works which make a big deal of the fourth wall, it's also a good laugh to keep up the theatrical traditions which predate it. More Shakespearean Shakespeare, please!
Desperate Measures
has now finished its run, but the MSC will return in February 2014 with Before Juliet.
They have future designs on Shrew
, and are intending to commemorate the centenary of the First World War with one of the great historical plays. See you there!