Measure for measure

Re-read this to prepare for the 2015 Globe production.

ISABELLA: O! it is excellent
To have a giant's strength, but it is tyrannous
To use it like a giant.

"Problem play", they call it, meaning either that it's a play that revolves around a central moral question (as if Shakespeare's other plays don't), or that it's a bit of a mess that nobody can even figure out if it's supposed to be a comedy or a tragedy (as if that were a necessary distinction). And honestly, both definitions work here. There are questions in Measure for Measure that, sadly, still feel relevant; but yeah, it's also a play that veers wildly from bawdy sex jokes to serious moral cul-de-sacs, with a plot that gets so needlessly complicated that even the characters seem lost as to why they're doing what they're doing, before an ending which seems not only tacked-on but also like it misses its own point; the powerful man who helped the virtuous woman of faith escape a fate worse than death thanks her by... claiming her for himself?

ANGELO: Is this her fault or mine?
The tempter or the tempted, who sins most?

The 2015 production, though, really dresses for the ambiguity, and setting it at the Globe - with all its opportunities for the cast to interact with the audience - doesn't hurt either. There are basically two plays going on at once: a bawdy sex comedy in which powerful people get to play dress-up and Prince And The Pauper at stakes that may be high but never feel as if they'll count (and rich tourists get to pay money to see them do it); and a tragedy in which women and working-class stiffs are at the mercy of the whims and games of those in power. Dominic Rowan plays the Duke as a vain, privileged (yes, Shakespeare actually uses that word) joker who's not necessarily a bad guy, just unable to see past his own place in the world or that his power has limitations; while Mariah Gale as Isabella is a barely concealed bundle of nerves, who genuinely does not want to have to be in this play, but then again it's a play about consent and the lack of it... (No, seriously, how are Tumblr not all over this?)

DUKE VINCENTIO
Love you the man that wrong'd you?
JULIET
Yes, as I love the woman that wrong'd him.
DUKE VINCENTIO
So then it seems your most offenceful act
Was mutually committed?
JULIET
Mutually.

The problem at the heart of the play when Shakespeare wrote it in the days of puritanism, was hipocrisy and the inhumanity of hiding behind the law to condemn others. It still is in 2015 - Angelo's monologuing (because he's not really listening to anyone) about how it's not him but the law that condemns sinners to death, he has all the power but no responsibility to anyone living - but played against the current discourse it grows into not only a fun sex farce (which it is, if not always a comfortable one - the happy ending, after all, is basically achieved by the heroes raping the villain) but an actual problem play. One where Isabella always has to start over from the beginning every time a new man blunders on stage and explain yet again how her body and soul are not something to be bartered against her will for their sport, while the men can find no other explanation for her refusal to play along than that she's prude, insane, or being manipulated by a man with an agenda (the irony being that she is being manipulated by the man who makes that accusation). And makes us both laugh and wince at it, sets it in the age Shakespeare wrote it but makes it talk to the present.