Theater Review - Half-measure

Shakespeare Tavern’s Measure for Measure a bawdy Bard



Unless sex itself goes out of style, Measure for Measure will always have relevance. One of Shakespeare’s strangest and most problematic texts, the ribald comedy has enough oddities and contradictions to open it to multiple treatments, from skirt-chasing satyr play to savage critique of puritanical hypocrisy.

Measure is staged so frequently and with so many interpretations (a Monica Lewinsky version would be the most obvious) that it’s surprising to see a production with no “concept” whatsoever. But that’s precisely what the New American Shakespeare Company offers with its bawdy Measure, in which the subtext seldom goes beyond double entendres.

Director Tim Habeger takes a lively approach to what could be called the Shakespeare Tavern’s “house style” for comedy, which heavily emphasizes interaction and intermingling with the audience. A rowdily entertaining curtain speech features Jeffrey Watkins and Marc McPherson, half in character in their roles as the authoritative Angelo and wisecracking Pompey, respectively. During the play, when the crowd-pleasing McPherson has center stage, he even ad-libs and offers anachronistic asides, such as calling an audience member “a streetwalker named Desire.”

Suggestive tomfoolery is called for as the Vienna of the play is a “party city,” prompting the scholarly Duke (Dikran Tulaine) to leave town and let his deputy Angelo enforce its laws. A stricture forbidding fornication condemns young Claudio (Justin Welborn) for getting Juliet (Lauren Dollar) with child out of wedlock. Claudio’s only hope against the chopping block is entreaties from his sister Isabel (Jen Apgar), who interrupts her initiation into a nunnery to plead for her brother’s life.

Isabel moves Angelo, all right, but not the part she intends. Angelo tells her if she gives up her virginity to him, he’ll spare Claudio’s life, and Watkins gets plenty of comic mileage out of Angelo’s shock at his own priapism. A solution for Isabel’s dilemma may come from the Duke himself, who’s returned to Vienna incognito to observe Angelo.

Onstage Apgar often comes across as a coquette, and here she relishes drawing out Shakespearean lines like “concupiscible intemperate lust.” Appealing though she is, she’s miscast as the religious and “cold” Isabel, seeming nearly as perky as Sally Field’s Flying Nun, and she reacts to Angelo’s advances as if she finds him more “icky” than impious.

This production consistently takes dark material lightly. When the disguised Duke counsels Claudio to “be absolute for death,” Welborn wipes his cheek with a “say it, don’t spray it” expression on his face. There’s literally a grave quality to Isabel’s scene with Claudio, when he urges her to save his life by taking Angelo’s offer. Apgar instead milks its comic potential like an amusing pair of sitcom siblings, with irked Isabel dragging and kicking her brother.

Maurice Ralston’s leering Casanova Lucio also gets plenty of opportunities to play to the crowd, and his moments of unwittingly slandering the disguised Duke to his face unfold like a vaudeville act. Several scenes in prison offer elaborate slapstick, as when Tony Brown’s dimwitted constable has McPherson tied to a rope, giving him slack and then “reeling” him in. Habeger nicely stages the climactic confrontation before the city gates, having Ralston heckle from the balcony.

The Tavern’s Measure gets bogged down in the mechanics of the Duke’s plot to secretly resolve the situation. Since he is the Duke, he could free Claudio and reassure Isabel whenever he likes, so his extensive charade seems pointless. Perhaps this would be less an issue if Tulaine’s Duke seemed more passionately engaged with his unknowing subjects, either as enlightened ruler or voyeuristic puppetmaster. Tulaine gives the disguised Duke a comically thick Scottish accent, but retains it only fitfully. (Incidentally, the actor has a featured role, with few lines but plenty of screen time, in the new Martin Lawrence movie Black Knight.)

The ensemble’s eagerness to connect with its audience is commendable, but it can be actually distracting how often the cast looks out to the seats. Once you notice it, you can’t stop noticing how characters, often in bitter dispute, so rarely look at each other. You can’t deny the Tavern’s commitment to the play’s knockabout comedy, but there’s so much else going on in Shakespeare’s text that just going for laughs makes it out to be a half-Measure.

Measure for Measure plays through Dec. 2 at the New American Shakespeare Tavern, 499 Peachtree St., at 7:30 p.m. Fri. and Sat. and 6:30 p.m. Sun. $19.50-$24.50. 404-874-5299.??