Review: MEASURE FOR MEASURE at Folger Theatre

Of the many fine elements in Folger Theatre's Measure for Measure, directed by Psalmayene 24, the A number one greatest absolute top is Renea S. Brown's performance as Isabella. Brown has already earned a small pile of Helen Hayes Awards, but not for Shakespeare. Yet. Isabella's a postulant in a religious order who becomes the target of a sexual predator. Shakespeare set the play in the Catholic Vienna to avoid trouble with the successors of his late and very Protestant Queen (remember her father with the 6 wives). Brown renders her ordeal—the challenge to her faith, the assault on her idealism, the growth of her eloquence and of her secular understanding—with simple mastery.

Isabella's world is led by a Duke (Nathan Darrow) who has a somewhat passive/aggressive idea of how to rule; he leaves town. He appoints a fellow nobleman, one he says he trusts, to rule in his absence and feigns fatigue with the demands of office on his way out (we should be so lucky). That nobleman, Angelo (Lee Osorio), turns out to be the aforementioned predator. The Duke's much more trustworthy staff, Escalus (Holly Twyford) and the Provost (Sean Fri), do what they can to maintain the Duke's ways, but they are outranked by Angelo. So the moral testing of the Duke's world ensues. Measure for Measure may not be a comedy, but it does have a satisfying ending.

Shakespeare includes clowns, no matter what. Measure for Measure has an excellent share. Mistress Overdone, elegantly underplayed by Chinai Rouetté, runs a brothel—just the sort of element that warrants refining out of society. But she's having none of Angelo's efforts to police the morals of the realm. Pros in the oldest profession ultimately always stay in business, and Mistress Overdone does not pay as severely as some of the reprobates in this Vienna eventually must. Ahmad Kamal as Pompey her tapster (and sometime pimp) equals Overdone in irreverence and Rouetté in sly panache. Ryan Sellers and John Sygar join Kamal and Rouetté, playing various misfits, nut jobs, and, no other way to put it, executioners, with skill and lots of help from the costume plot.

Twyford, who plays Escalus like an ensemble member of the cast of 9 to 5—primly secretarial—can show distress at how south the realm is going under Angelo. (All of Lawshawn Melton's wigs and hair excel.) But Sean Fri's Provost has to endure Angelo's mismanagement until the Duke eventually brings him in on the plot; Fri's depiction of utter relief is palpable.

Osorio's work makes the skin crawl, as a proper portrayal of Angelo ought to do. Ever wondered what it was like to be E. Jean Carroll, Virginia Giuffre, or Miriam Haley? Osorio shows you with horrifying precision aimed at Isabella, his potential victim.

Shakespeare was a little unfair to the actor playing the Duke (his prerogative since he played him in the first performance in 1604); he doesn't reveal why the Duke wants to leave and then to observe his subjects while undercover. So when the play begins, Darrow just gets stuck seeming odd when he barks orders at Angelo, the Provost, and Escalus. But once the Duke distances himself, Darrow finds and reveals all the Duke's depths, subtleties, “dark corners,” yes, but also generosities. What seem to be the vices of society, per the Duke, can be mitigated with generosity and forgiveness. Except for one thing.

The Duke will not countenance slander, and Measure for Measure contains a slanderer-in-chief (sound familiar?). Jonathan Feuer plays Lucio, like all those who slander every time they speak, as if he's the greatest thing since, well, sliced bread deserves better. Feuer's Lucio probably would love it if every building in the neighborhood were named after him. Feuer preens until, in the final seconds of the play, Darrow's Duke fixes Lucio.

Psalmayene 24 sets this production of Measure for Measure in the 1950s in what seems to be the American South. And Mika Eubanks' costumes go beautifully there, recalling crinolines, print dresses with halter tops, shrugs, buttoned up suits, and the relaxed nun's habits that began to predominate even before Vatican II. Playing the Platters' 1955 “The Great Pretender” as intermission ended niftily complements a play one of which's main characters pretends during most of his scenes! Unfortunately, the cast's Southern accents, which might've been helpful to an audience dealing with Shakespeare in Charleston, New Orleans, Atlanta, or over to Big Spring, more often makes Shakespeare's poetry, vocabulary, and syntax less intelligible here in the DMV. The director places Lucio in a balcony, where half the audience cannot see him, during what should be the apex of his slandering. And the set (a really good rendering of a bland, green, 1950s office by Debra Booth) contains a huge sign stage left that much of the audience cannot see which indicates that the play is set in the segregated American South. The Duke's departure in act one, when the audience barely knows what he's up to, places him in the center aisle behind the first three rows of audience who then cannot see him. And later, the director places him out of sight, far right, under an overhang during a crucial scene when the Duke is constructively eavesdropping. The dear, stumpy Folger space is not as flexible as Psalmayene 24 seems to think it is, and including slapstick comedy during the dénouement of a dark melodrama about societal morality seems a troubling directorial distraction.

But Renea S. Brown; Darrow and Feuer and Osorio and Kamal. And the greatest of these is Brown. Hers is a definitive performance.

Measure for Measure (2 hours, 45 minutes including intermission) runs through November 1 at the Folger Shakespeare Library, 201 East Capitol St. SE.

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