Sex, repression and lies make 'Measure for Measure' timeless

Galway based Theatrecorp Company, which has a reputation of performing classic plays from England and mainland Europe, will stage Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure in the Black Box Theatre from Tuesday next, January 29 to Saturday, February 2.

Measure for Measure was first performed in the early 1600s, but continues to have resonance for contemporary audiences, especially in Ireland, says its director Max Hafler.

“I love it, because it’s a morally ambiguous play and that makes it very modern. It’s also about injustice and corruption – how somebody can be maligned and abused and how the perpetrators can get away with it.”

In Measure for Measure, the Duke of Vienna announces his decision to leave his city for a while, and appoints his deputy, Angelo, to govern instead. The Duke, however, disguises himself as a friar and stays in Vienna, intending to investigate moral decay in the city.

As interim ruler, the moralistic Angelo revives an old law, which forbids sex outside marriage. The penalty for breaking this law is death. Under these regulations, Claudio, a young man who has had pre-marital sex with his fiancée, is sentenced to die.

Claudio's sister Isabella, a novice nun, pleads with Angelo for her brother's life. Angelo attempts to blackmail Isabella into his bed, but she refuses although that will mean certain death for Claudio. The Duke, in disguise overhears Angelo and intervenes. This results in Angelo ending up in the bed of Mariana, a woman he has betrayed in the past.

Having had sex with the woman he believes to be Isabella, Angelo betrays her by refusing to pardon her brother but his plans are ultimately foiled by the Duke.

In this play, Vienna is a sharply divided society of pristine courts, brothels and prisons, where the rich and powerful can disguise their mistakes while others must pay for them.

Measure for Measure is about Angelo’s corruption, but the Duke isn’t exactly in the clear either, Max feels – at least not for a modern audience – as he set up a whole situation in order to ‘correct’ the society he runs.

“The Duke and Angelo want to decide how everybody else will live but they don’t live by those precepts,” observes Max. “And if you live in a repressed society, the muck is going to come out.”

“It’s about morality as a form of control,” says Sarah O’Toole, who plays Isabella in this production.

Galway-born Sarah previously played Isabella in a college production of Measure for Measure while she was studying to become a theatre director in the UK.

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.