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The Duchess of Malfi review – subterfuge and spying in the #MeToo age | Stage


When The Duchess of Malfi was revived in 1945 after falling out of fashion for centuries, its violence and meditations on mortality suddenly felt more real, less baroque. Today, Lydia Wilson – as the strong-willed duchess murdered by her brothers for daring to marry her steward – speaks of its resonance in the age of #MeToo, from the fatal surveillance of female sexuality to abuses of power.

Rebecca Frecknall’s contemporised story incorporates these themes in this arresting, if over-stylised version. The world here is recognisably our own yet not quite so. Actors are in modern evening dress and Chloe Lamford’s spare set is partly comprised of a tiled glass box, reminiscent of a gym changing room, which becomes a parallel stage that adds to a sense of subterfuge and spying. The Malfi court wavers between the real and hyperreal, rich in symbolism with ghostly beings rubbing alongside the corporeal.

Some symbolism works brilliantly: the blood shed here is black not red, suggesting a court so corrupt that it has perverted nature. The duchess is the only one barefoot in the first half and, as regal as she seems, this gives her a sense of vulnerability.

But the spare and intimate power of the production is undercut by the glut of theatrical technique, from actors performing in slow motion and speaking through microphones to the chapter headings daubed against the back wall. The final frenzy of murderous violence is played in slow motion to Dido’s Lament and verges on cliche, however beautifully it is enacted.

Other aspects are magnificent: Leo Bill is a brutish Bosola and compelling in his rage and guilt. Frecknall reassigns power to all three murdered women in the play (including the lady-in-waiting, Cariola, played by Ioanna Kimbook, and the Cardinal’s poisoned mistress, Julia, played by Shalini Peiris). They do not disappear after their deaths but loom on stage, the duchess a particularly potent force who haunts her oppressors. The female line is given new life by the inheritor of the family fortune, who here is the duchess’s daughter, not the son of Webster’s original.

The edited script has a fast, fluid clarity that magnifies Webster’s poetry. And it is an accomplishment that the love story between the duchess and Antonio (Khalid Abdalla) is not overshadowed by the melancholic or macabre; courtship and family scenes contain both ardour and innocence.

Best of all is Wilson as the delicate yet steely duchess; her performance is one of riveting and charismatic perfection.

At the Almeida, London, until 25 January.



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