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For the second play of the Actors' Shakespeare Project this season, they've decided to change things up a little. The Actors' Shakespeare Project is doing a play by someone other than Shakespeare. The Duchess of Malfi is by John Webster, who was another Jacobean era playwright.
The costuming, set design, sound design, and especially the lighting design are creative and effective. The stage is long and narrow, down the middle of the room, with the audience on both sides of it, rather like a runway. There are doors on each end. The result is to give an impression of restriction -- the characters have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. They can go left, or right, but nowhere else. And when those doors are locked -- which happens a fair bit -- the characters are completely trapped.
Which fits with the play. The Duchess of Malfi, a young widow, is in love. And her two brothers, powerful and greedy men, do not wish her to remarry -- political considerations.
Every character is constrained by their desires to act as they act. Whether they're driven by love, or lust, or greed, or desire for power, they are all pushed to do what they do, against their wills and better natures. Bill Barclay (who's rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors) gets one of the meatiest roles, as Bosola, an originally-honorable man who's bought by the brothers to be a spy in the Duchess's household.
Usually when I'm writing these reviews, I can assume that people are generally familiar with the plot of the play I'm reviewing. Most of you have usually have heard SOMETHING about most Shakespeare plays. But I suspect that many of you, even if you've heard the title somewhere, will have no idea what the play is about. I certainly didn't. And I really enjoyed having no idea what I was in for.
So I don't want to give too much away. I want you to be able to have the opportunity to watch it without knowing how it turns out. After all, this is a period in which some plays had happy endings, and some did not. We got to have the excitement of not knowing what the ending would be until it came.
I do feel comfortable saying this, though: if you are a fan of sex, violence, betrayal, romance, a sprinkling of comedy, brutality, and murder in your stories, odds are you'll like this show.
The costuming, set design, sound design, and especially the lighting design are creative and effective. The stage is long and narrow, down the middle of the room, with the audience on both sides of it, rather like a runway. There are doors on each end. The result is to give an impression of restriction -- the characters have nowhere to go, nowhere to escape. They can go left, or right, but nowhere else. And when those doors are locked -- which happens a fair bit -- the characters are completely trapped.
Which fits with the play. The Duchess of Malfi, a young widow, is in love. And her two brothers, powerful and greedy men, do not wish her to remarry -- political considerations.
Every character is constrained by their desires to act as they act. Whether they're driven by love, or lust, or greed, or desire for power, they are all pushed to do what they do, against their wills and better natures. Bill Barclay (who's rapidly becoming one of my favorite actors) gets one of the meatiest roles, as Bosola, an originally-honorable man who's bought by the brothers to be a spy in the Duchess's household.
Usually when I'm writing these reviews, I can assume that people are generally familiar with the plot of the play I'm reviewing. Most of you have usually have heard SOMETHING about most Shakespeare plays. But I suspect that many of you, even if you've heard the title somewhere, will have no idea what the play is about. I certainly didn't. And I really enjoyed having no idea what I was in for.
So I don't want to give too much away. I want you to be able to have the opportunity to watch it without knowing how it turns out. After all, this is a period in which some plays had happy endings, and some did not. We got to have the excitement of not knowing what the ending would be until it came.
I do feel comfortable saying this, though: if you are a fan of sex, violence, betrayal, romance, a sprinkling of comedy, brutality, and murder in your stories, odds are you'll like this show.