January 24, 2003: Webster, The Duchess of Malfi
National Theatre, Lyttelton, preview
I am so much moved and troubled by this production that I feel unable to write about it at the present moment. It is such a profound exposure of the depths of evil people are capable of — were then, are now — that I cannot face writing about it. We are on the brink of a horrendous war, and tonight I have seen the representation of children being hanged and strangled, and it is too much, too much.
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I have calmed down about the production of The Duchess, but I was mightily stricken by it for a day or so (it is now Sunday and I am on board American Airlines 109, shortly to take off for Boston).
The set is simple but striking in a bold, thematic way. The central feature is a wide, high set of “bleachers” (an American English term), perhaps 8-10 rows high and covering the entire width of the stage. At various points in the action characters walk all the way up and over it, disappearing out of sight over the rise. Downstage of this is a kind of depression, parallel to the front row of bleachers. Running the width of this is a very large square of plexiglass, perhaps eight feet square. At the opening moment of the play, the square being at stage right, we see — or sense, more than see clearly — various persons sitting by themselves and dispersed up and across the bleachers. The plexiglass square begins traveling towards stage left; as it moves, spotlights come on, one at a time, and then go off again. This serves to pick out each character and momentarily to frame and highlight that character — only to plunge them quickly again into the general gloom. After the fact, it strikes me that I was looking at a range of seats in hell. (“This is hell,” Marlowe’s Mephistopheles says, “nor am I out of it.”)
This is a modern dress production, clothed in the habits of our own times, and somewhat on the ordinary-to-shabby side, even in the case of the Duchess and others presumed to be wealthy. Almost all of it is black or at least dark. But then the brightest colors are the red piping on the Cardinal’s habit. Many of the men are dressed in clerical garb, and Roman collars. One of Bosola’s disguises is this same clerical garb. The production runs about two and a quarter hours and is performed without intermission as an indication of its quality of relentlessness. The sliding plexiglass square is also used to hide certain characters, such as the Duchess’s obsessed twin brother Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria, who are spot-lighted into full visibility by this means. Overall, this striking device even adds a measure of metaphysical transparency to the entire production. We are in the presence of a chaotic, ungovernable force, before which human beings are quite helpless, even though they may assert their wills in the most aggressive way.
A measure of how oppressive this force proves to be is the transaction, early on, between Bosola, time’s independent contractor, and Ferdinand (or is