The time should have been right for Thomas Middleton’s rackety 1620s Jacobean drama. Its awkward mix of horror, humour and sexual exploitation chimes perfectly with our post-moral era.
Unfortunately, Amy Hodge’s Eighties-set revival repeatedly misfires, particularly in the labyrinthine first half. It’s by turns gimmicky, arch and silly. Some morbid momentum is gained after the interval, as we hurtle towards the pile-up of bodies at the end, but by then half my row had left.
Women are commodified in Middleton’s play, but are also the most compelling characters, and the most troubling. Thalissa Teixeira’s young bride Bianca ends up murderously in thrall to the Duke who raped her.
Olivia Vinall’s Isabella is obscenely inspected by the idiot cuckold who will cover up her incestuous relationship with her uncle. Tara Fitzgerald as merry widow Livia, who enables the incest and facilitates Bianca’s rape, is as amoral as any man.
When Marianne Elliott staged the play at the National in 2010, this all seemed disconcerting and wrong, an insurmountably patriarchal construct. Now we can all think of contemporary parallels. And the sardonic self-awareness of the women is thrilling. But, oh dear, it’s bungled here.
I enjoyed Fitzgerald’s turn as a husky Jackie Collins seductress in capri pants but Hodge sends her up relentlessly. The gender-switched casting of some roles adds nothing to our understanding of the play, and the score (blurting saxophones, plinky toy piano) and an air of camp comedy overwhelm pivotal moments. It’s a waste to play the whole thing for laughs.
A waste and a shame.
Until April 18 (020 7902 1400, shakespearesglobe.com)
