|
|
THE FREE LANCE-STAR
WASHINGTON--Director Michael Kahn has been tinkering with "The Duchess of Malfi," and the results aren't pretty.
Not that a straightforward version of John Webster's Jacobean tragedy would ever be pretty, exactly, but Kahn's interpretation makes a grim drama downright ugly.
Webster was a late contemporary of William Shakespeare, and "Duchess," his best-known drama, was first performed in 1613. It follows the popular formula for Jacobean plays--injustice, revenge and piles of bodies at the final curtain. The plot is typically complicated and has hay-wagon-size holes.
The duchess of the title, a widow, is forbidden by her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, to marry again. She, however, has fallen in love with her steward, Antonio, and marries him secretly. They have three children together before the brothers figure out what's going on, and start making trouble. The Duchess manages to send Antonio and their oldest son away to safety before she and her other two children are killed at her brothers' behest. Antonio comes back and gets killed himself. The servant who worked for Ferdinand against the Duchess has a change of heart and turns his sword upon the two brothers. They all kill one another in a welter of gore. In the end, the Duchess' surviving son by Antonio is proclaimed the heir of her estates.
All of this is fairly dismal as it stands. Unfortunately, Kahn has added touches that only ratchet up the unpleasantness.
Webster gave Ferdinand a speech in which he says his rage over the Duchess' marriage is because he had hoped to gain financially while she remained a widow. There are, to be sure, fleeting hints that Ferdinand's love for his twin sister might have an unwholesome flavor, but it's all very ambiguous. Kahn has opted to make that interpretation explicit. He cut Ferdinand's avaricious speech, and has him caressing his sister wildly during the confrontation between the two. As a crowning touch, Kahn has Kelly McGillis, who plays the Duchess, bare her breasts as she defies her brother to tell her why her youth and beauty should be shut up like a holy relic.
None of this is edifying.
Kahn also undermines Webster in the scenes immediately preceding the Duchess' murder.
Bosola, Ferdinand's agent, tells him that the Duchess' behavior is so noble that it gives a majesty to adversity. Ferdinand then sends in a bunch of madmen from the local asylum to try to drive her over the edge. There is no indication in the script that this has any effect on the Duchess' sanity. She sounds clear and resolute throughout.
Yet Kahn has McGillis writhing around in torment, practically foaming at the mouth. This is noble?
Even the ending has been twisted. For Webster, it was enough to have several gentlemen of the palace step forward to see that the Duchess' son will take her place. Kahn has the little boy grabbing his Uncle Ferdinand's hobby horse and riding off up the stairs while his mother's ghost vainly tries to stop him. Are we to infer from this that the youngster is doomed to repeat Ferdinand's sins?
Then there's the the problem of volume. All of the available material on the play--press releases, Web sites and forewords to the play--speaks of the beauty and poetry of Webster's language. This is almost impossible to discern with both Donald Carrier, who plays Ferdinand, and McGillis emoting at the tops of their voices, as they do for most of the play. Seventeenth-century English is unfamiliar enough to the modern ear without having it garbled by shouting.
So is there anything good about this production?
Well, Andrew Long does a super job as Bosola, Ferdinand's informer. It's a difficult role, with the character going from pragmatic mercenary, willing to do anything to make a ducat, to repentant avenger of wrongs, but Long manages to make him believable.
Ed Gero is impressive as the cynical Cardinal.
Fine performances are also handed in by Robert Tyree as Antonio; Caroline Clay as Cariola, the Duchess' waiting woman; and Elizabeth Long as the Cardinal's mistress.
Robert Perdziola has created splendid costumes, although Walt Spangler's brooding set design is a bit baffling.
Those with a taste for Jacobean drama may want to see this production just to compare it to others they've seen. For the rest of us, there has got to be a better way to learn to appreciate the genre.