A ‘Measure’ for the #MeToo era
“Who will believe thee, Isabel?” Those words, first spoken on a 1604 stage in the course of a sexual assault, cut across the centuries with an urgency that’s brought renewed appreciation for William Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure.” Santa Barbara’s Ensemble Theatre Company’s high-tech, modern dress production proves chillingly effective in making that link.
Director Jonathan Fox pulls no punches with the play’s depiction of corruption and abuse of power, personified in judge Angelo (Richard Baird) when would-be nun Isabella (Lily Gibson) pleads for mercy for her condemned brother (Trevor Peterson). Angelo’s offer is brutally direct: her brother’s life for her sexual favors. Laughing off her threat to expose him, Angelo revels in the immunity his gender and higher social stature afford him.
These well-cast foes heighten the stakes in the unfolding collision of power, sex, religion and morality. Baird shows us not only Angelo’s depravity but also the tortured path of repressed sexuality and rationalization that leads him to it.
Gibson’s Isabella is a complex mix of sharp-witted eloquence, lofty ethics and naive vulnerability that makes her victimization all the more horrific.
All this in a play considered one of the Bard’s comedies — albeit mainly by virtue of its villain’s ironic comeuppance and the restoration of order. Even in its final moments, Isabella’s silent bewilderment exposes the hollow ambiguity of the supposedly happy ending.
Still, this is only one of the play’s three narrative threads, and in other respects the verdict on this “Measure” is more measured.
The bawdy comic story lines are well-performed, most prominently by Brian Ibsen as the pompous lecher, Lucio. Nevertheless, the humorous antics seem muted when playing out against Jeffrey Behm’s minimalist set. The production’s tone skews so relentlessly dark that the opposing worlds never come together in the finale.
In the third subplot, the Duke, disguised as a friar, engineers the deceptions that resolve matters. Abdul-Khaliq Murtadha struggles with the verse. Given some of the unnecessarily cruel tactics the character employs, a more fitting stance would be godlike detachment while making sport of the mortal follies that the play doles out in generous measure.