The Duchess of Malfi – Bell Shakespeare

Overview

If there are seven basic plots in literature, one of them must be, 'woman has sex, everyone dies'. At least, it seems to be so among the English Renaissance dramatists. Recently in Sydney, we've seen Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus and John Ford's 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, great tragedies where incest seems to be its own genre, punishing women for their sexuality is the norm, and grotesquery reigns. Shakespeare may even be the cheeriest of his contemporaries. For theatre-makers putting on these plays today, it's imperative that they do something with the contained misogyny (Benedict Andrews dealt with Shakespeare's 'problem play' Measure for Measure, the plot of which turns on a woman's virginity, by making it madly implode — that was something) and find a relatable note for modern audiences.

Bell Shakespeare's The Duchess of Malfi, adapted by Hugh Colman and Ailsa Piper from the original tragedy by John Webster, gets much closer than most, mainly because the Duchess gets to be a full character. Though she may be admired for her "noble virtue", Lucy Bell (daughter of John Bell, who directs) plays her as a self-assured woman with a humanistic moral code, a sense of humour that spans the wry and the silly, and, yes, sexuality she owns. When her brothers, the manipulative Cardinal (David Whitney) and creepily in-love-with-her Judge (Sean O'Shea), forbid the young widow to remarry, she secretly weds Antonio (Matthew Moore), steward of her household and a man widely regarded as being "too honest".

Unfortunately, word is destined to get back to the brothers eventually, because they've stationed spy and assassin Daniel de Bosola (Ben Wood) at her door. Wood puts in a great performance as the hulking, ocker-toned Bosola, who gets all the best lines. The way he can pick up all the other cast members on stage is a sheer joy. Still, as much as he's an engaging character and in many ways our guide through this version of the play, he also remains frustratingly impenetrable, required to be both mercenary and bleeding heart.

Trimmed down to a svelte 110 minutes without interval, this Duchess is overall a dark, insidious, and thrilling concentrate. Its minimal, nightclubby set, studded with quiet doors and ensnaring lights, facilitates the fluid way in which characters move in the text, assembling and reassembling in various permutations. The sense of doublecrossing and deceit is white hot as this punished woman and everyone she's touched go to their inevitable end.