Theatre review - The Duchess of Malfi
Rebecca
Frecknall’s stylised production of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi explores
a brutal patriarchal world where women’s rights and sexuality are controlled by
men, and they are forced to navigate a corrupt hierarchy of power.
When the
widowed duchess (Lydia Wilson) dares to marry her steward Antonio (Khalid
Abdalla), a man beneath her station, and has a family with him, her brothers
consider it a step too far.
Incensed, the
duchess’s twin, Ferdinand (Jack Riddiford) and the Cardinal (Michael Marcus)
exact a bloody revenge.
The duchess’s
home, which becomes her “prison”, is a tiled, glass box. Here she is spied upon
by Bosola (Leo Bill), her brothers’ henchman. Chloe Lamford’s clinical set
design evokes a stifling atmosphere where women are relentlessly exposed and
can be dispatched with ease.
After her
death, the duchess haunts the space with her fellow female victims as they
watch the bloodbath unfold in front of them.
Frecknall draws
out the play’s contemporary resonances. The women wear evening dress and the
men are in suits. The duchess is barefoot throughout, somehow emphasizing her
poise, while shabby Bosola wanders around in his socks.
The orgy of
killing at the end, played out in slow motion, reminds us of how violence
begets violence. This final gory display of human depravity may have been
conceived over four hundred years ago but Frecknall’s reimagining holds a
mirror up to the dark corners of our own world.
Almeida Theatre
Until January
25
020 7359 4404Originally published by Camden Review