Marianne Elliott provides dark and decadent production of this rarely performed Jacobean gem.
On a smoke-clad rotating set, by turns bejewelled, candlelit and scrubby, director Marianne Elliot has laid out a dark film-noir-esque Florence, fuelled by greed, sex and power. In this Florence, women are at their cruellest, their most gullible and their most zealous. They collude with evil men, use the sappier ones as toy boys and generally manipulate and shag around a bit.
The unsurpassed queen of this puppet mastery is the widow Livia, played coolly and darkly by seasoned thespian Harriet Walter (Sense & Sensibility, Atonement ). She stars opposite a brilliantly suave Raymond Coulthard (Emmerdale, Casualty) as her smitten younger brother who is grossly but charmingly obsessed with his niece Isabella. This disturbing lack of repulsion toward incest can perhaps be explained away by its contrast to the perpetually thrusting buffoon who intends to marry Isabella after he’s gauged whether or not she’s “wild and hairy down there” – cue amusing attempts at looking up skirts.
To his credit, in this irritating role and with little time on stage, Harry Melling packs a punch as the quiff-toting, Argyle sock-wearing moron. With Samuel Barnett (The History Boys) indisposed, his weighty role as the romantic, gutless Leantio, Livia’s object of desire went to Nick Blood on Saturday night. Convincing as the sweet, meek clerk who gets hella lucky when the noblewoman Bianca consents to marry him, Blood too proves his mettle.
Thomas Middleton’s play from almost four centuries ago lays plain the corruption and arrogance that so often comes with obscene wealth. Sadly, Middleton doesn’t weave the intricate web of sub-plots Shakespeare spoiled us with, which limits his range for humour. He does still provide us with high drama of the finest order that comes to a stunning head at a final masque on a perpetually turning stage full of love, passion, bloodshed and poison. In spite of The Cardinal’s rushed voice of reason at the end, we're left with a deliciously eerie and menacing final scene.
Despite the '50s costume, the salute to the film noir era and James Hayes looking utterly pimpalicious as Isabella’s marriage-arranging father, the lazy lounge London jazz that forms the soundtrack jars with the rest of the play. But it’s in that final scene that Elliot’s directing, Lez Brotherston’s designing and Arthur Pita’s choreography come together seamlessly, highlighting the clever depth of stage that makes the grandeur and gluttony stretch out into the audience.
Photo Credit: Raymond Coulthard and Harriet Walter bySimon Anand
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