[In the following review, Tucker finds director Sean Holmes's 2003 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Measure for Measure, set in the dreary, war-torn Vienna of the early mid-twentieth century, a compelling interpretation of one of Shakespeare's most challenging plays.]

Measure for Measure is notoriously one of Shakespeare's most difficult plays to understand, if not indeed to perform. Conflicting critical estimates have competed for dominance. Victorians and some later critics tended to view it as a rank failure, the result possibly of Shakespeare's taking a wrong turn on his dramaturgic road. Some have found it a comedy as traditional as As You Like It, albeit misunderstood. Others have seen it as a deliberate cynical parody of an orthodox comedy, a product of Shakespeare's disillusionment. Others have found it a challenging work, brimming with intellectual subtleties. Much of the problem results from Shakespeare's seemingly nebulous attitude toward his characters. Are we to see the manipulative Duke as a political bungler, awkwardly trying to nullify his dangerous errors, or as a wise ruler, perhaps even a representative of divine providence or a flattering portrait of King James? Is Isabella a noble heroine or an unyielding prude? Is Shakespeare far too lenient in allowing Angelo to be pardoned and rewarded with marriage, as Dr. Johnson, Coleridge, and numerous others have argued? How different the situation would be if we only knew how it was originally performed! But lacking such knowledge we are faced with a dramatic sphinx that does not easily yield its secrets. Hence, we confront so discordant a play that I doubt any production can catch its dramatic essence—if that indeed is still a goal of theatrical productions. All a director can do is make risky choices and follow them. Sean Holmes's production goes a long way toward presenting us with a play that is provisionally coherent and dramatically engaging.

Updating the play, Holmes gives us a grim Vienna of the 1930's. It begins with the Duke's pretended departure at a railroad station. A sign says “West Wien.” Dark clouds drift slowly but menacingly across the upper cyclorama and continue to do so throughout much of the play. A grimy brick wall extends along the rear of the stage. As the whistle of an approaching railroad train reaches our ears, alcoholics stumble about, prostitutes angle for catches, shady persons skulk in shadows. Clearly this is a Vienna of social, moral, and spiritual decay. And of imminent danger. One cannot help thinking upon emergent Nazism and recall that Austria was annexed to the Third Reich.

In Holmes's interpretation this is the Duke's play, and Paul Higgins readily takes command of the stage. His Duke clearly has been remiss in allowing Vienna's moral laxity; he has also erred in granting power to Angelo. Stung by his own culpability, yet basically decent, Higgins' Duke sets about to rectify his errors. Assuming a broad Scots accent as Friar Lodowick, he energetically begins to move the other characters about so as to nullify Angelo's emergent threats and to produce justice and concord. Indeed as he creates his benevolent machinations, Angelo and Isabella's painful confrontations—so emphatic when the play is read in the study—sink to secondary importance as the Duke and his benign intervention attract the dramatic spotlight.

Although as in Shakespeare's text the Duke suitably rescues Claudio from death and forces Angelo to take Mariana as wife, Holmes ends his version with disturbing question marks. For a while during the trial scene, the dark revolving clouds are brightened by the sunlight, hinting that at the play's conclusion all indeed will be well, but in the closing moments the dark mists invade again, overshadowing the stage.

Holmes solves the problem of the Duke's sudden proposal to Isabella by giving it an unsettling spin. Instead of her gladly accepting his hand or looking indecisive, Holmes's Isabella looks stunned and embarrassed, causing the Duke to respond with similar confusion. In strained silence they exit the stage. All may have ended well at least temporarily for some characters, but the Duke apparently will confront a humiliating rejection.

Passing to the other characters, I might observe that Daniel Evans as Angelo presents us with bespectacled, nerd-like intellectual in a pressed business suit, one whose proper and even innocuous appearance conceals a potentiality for sexual fascism. Emma Fielding's versatility gives us a pitiable and ultimately likable Isabella. And John Lloyd Fillingham's Lucio delights us with the proper mixture of arrogance, comic bravado, and cruelty.

Holmes almost of necessity passes over other possible interpretations of the text, such as the Duke's arguable egocentricity and arrogance in not pardoning Lucio, but this director's careful development of Shakespeare's unwieldy tale gives us an absorbing rendition of the play.