#Measure4Measure at City Garage at the Bergamot Arts Center

A new version of Shakespeare’s "Measure for Measure" for City Garage by Charles A. Duncombe Vienna is corrupt, brimming with sex and vice. The Duke, lax in enforcing the strict laws, leaves the city in the hands of a puritanical reformer eager to impose moral order. This substitute begins ordering executions but when a beautiful young novice, pleading for the life of her brother, provokes his own lust, he resorts to sexual blackmail. When she threatens to expose him, he mocks her. Who would believe her rather than him? In this version of Shakespeare’s play for City Garage, gender politics, power, and sexuality are examined through a contemporary lens. A cast of seven playing multiple characters take a text from 1604 and create an intense, darkly comic, biting commentary on our own times. Then, as now, power and sex are inextricably entwined and the question of how to obtain justice remains just as difficult to answer.