Peter Viney's Blog

The Duchess of Malfi
by John Webster

Directed by Maria Aberg
Designer- Naomi Dawson
Music Orlando Gough

Royal Shakespeare Company,
Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Saturday 17th March 2018, 14.30

CAST:
Jeff Alexander – Doctor
Areth Ayeh – Julia, mistress of the Cardinal
Greg Barnett – Delio, friend of Antonio
Graeme Brookes – Officer
Will Brown – Roderigo
Alexander Cobb – Ferdinand, Duke of Calabria; twin brother to the duchess
Ashley Gayle- Silvio
Francis Gush -Counter Tenor
Amanda Hadingue – Cariola, waiting woman to the Duchess
Richard Hurst – Grisolan
Solomon Israel – Officer
Joan Iyiola – The Duchess of Malfi, a widow
Chris New – The Cardinal, elder brother of the duchess and Ferdinand
Nicholas Tennant – Bosola, spy and ex-galley-slave
Paul Woodson – Antonio de Bologna, Steward of the Duchess’s household

Dancers with Duchess at the rear

For the plot details and historical background, see my review of the 2012 Old Vic Production of The Duchess of Malfi here. This is the third major UK production of Webster’s play in six years. The Old Vic one, starring Eve Best, was so good that it’s kept the play in the collective. This one is even better. Maria Aberg has also directed Webster’s The White Devil at the RSC, with Joan Iyiola as Zanche.

I guess it pays to advertise. The Times a week ago told us that more blood (3000 litres or 40 bath tubs) had been ordered for this production than for any previous RSC play. I thought the quest for bloodier and bloodier productions had run its course, but not so.

At the beginning, the Duchess pulls on a large headless animal of indeterminate species (“a beast”) which is suspended belly forward over the stage. In Act II, it gushes blood. Hang on, I’ve seen this before! Carmen Disruption at The Almeida in 2015 had a large dead bull that exuded black liquid all over the stage. Perhaps it was supposed to be bull shit; it certainly was bullshit in that production. At the time I said ‘at least it wasn’t blood.’ Here it is. At least they have provided blankets to protect the front row (issued in the interval), something which Jamie Lloyd’s Richard III at the Trafalgar Studios failed to do in 2014, sending people from the first few rows home spattered with stage blood. I have a major aversion to productions that cover actors completely with mud, blood, flood, downpours of rain or bodily fluids.  It’s odd that the RSC thought it a good wheeze to plant press stories about the quantity of blood to gain publicity. If I hadn’t already bought tickets, it would have prompted me not to bother. That’s a pity, because this is a marvellous production.

The counter argument to the excess of gore, is that it is THE strongest Jacobean play about male violence to women with a totally clear plot, so in line with 2018’s concerns. Hence the more horrific it can be, the stronger the message is. Joan Iyiola who plays the Duchess said:

“If a young girl comes to see The Duchess of Malfi now and this is her definitive production, that’s going to be her lasting memory and that’s going to be the conversation that she carries into the world. If you have the opportunity, it is about what you can do for the generation coming up behind you.”
Joan Iyiola, The Stage 5 March 2018

Boudica in which she starred last year at The Globe was a pretty good argument too. Our most distinguished newspaper critics agreed on a four star rating for The Duchess of Malfi.

Enter the Duchess: Joan Iyiola. Ferdinand on the right (Alexander Cobb). Beast suspended. A bull? What?

I thought it a rock concert start in that the doors closed and we waited in silence for a full three minutes before the play started. Then I realized they had been positioning the beast for Joan Iyiola, as the Duchess, to drag onto the stage. The play is not only heavily cut, and characters eradicated (e.g. Julia’s cuckolded husband), but also significantly re-ordered in places, greatly to its advantage. It’s modern dress. The set resembles a gym, and we have an all male ensemble dancing and singing. However the singing and dancing is male, brutal, athletic, threatening.

The cutting (and delivery) gave clarity to the lines in a way I had missed in the two other versions I’ve seen. Webster has some intricate inventive similes in there too. Try Boseola’s speech:

There was a lady in France, that having had the smallpox, flayed the skin off her face, to make it more level; and whereas before she looked like a nutmeg grater, after she resembled an abortive hedgehog,

or

I would sooner eat a dead pigeon, taken from the soles of the feet of one sick of the plague, than kiss one of your fasting.

The three main characters, the siblings, are all cast younger than normal. Joan Iyiola is the Duchess, Chris New is the older brother, the Cardinal. Alexander Cobb is Prince Ferdinand, her twin. It works. It gives energy to the intrinsic plot.

The Duchess (Joan Iyiola) and brother Ferdinand (Alexander Cobb)

Joan Iyiola as the Duchess gives a powerful performance. She sounds authoritative with a rich voice, and looks marvellous. Early on she has an Afro wig that makes you think of a soul singer diva with charisma. She’s sensual when she wants to be with her chosen new spouse (she is a widow), Antonio, her steward. She gets in close and provocative, offering her gold wedding ring to heal his bloodshot eye … my mother used to think rubbing gold on a stye cured it too. (Medical warning: it doesn’t). As a widow, she is assertive on female sexuality in a world of double standards:

Diamonds are of most value, They say, that have passed through most jeweller’s hands.

Well, that’s the text. I remember it as “pearls.” Either they changed it, or my ears are going. But then she switches to icy cold with her pervy twin, Ferdinand, whose incestuous desires are apparent. Alexander Cobb is a discovery. This is going to be one of the best male performances of the year, just as Joan Iyiola is going to be one of the best female ones.

The Duchess’s chosen husband, Antonio is a “gentlemen” but not an aristocrat. That’s marked here by Paul Woodson having the only regional accent in the cast, Geordie. Her elder brother, the Cardinal, and her pervy twin, Ferdinand, are Princes of Aragon. The Spanish royal family at a time when Spain was the most powerful nation in the world.

The Duchess with Antonio (Paul Woodson)

In other productions, while they cast a charismatic Duchess, the play naturally falls in interest once she has been murdered (and what a murder it is by strangulation). Here she’s still on stage, on the bed, then ghostly watching from the rear. The cutting near the end eradicates the “Duchess of Malfi” effect (a phrase I’ve used in other reviews) which means killing off your best character far too long before the end. She also appears earlier in the play than in the text. All good moves.

Boseola (Nicholas Tennant)

Boseola (Nicholas Tennant) is the key figure holding the strands of the play together. He’s an ex-galley slave, who was sentenced to seven years for murder. Galley slave? Not much call for that job nowadays. He’s set by the brothers as a spy on the Duchess. If you haven’t read the plot, Ferdinand and the Cardinal are far away in Rome, and visit infrequently enough for the Duchess and Antonio to produce three children in their absence. That’s where Webster deviates from the original history / Italian tale where the Duchess was a widow, and two of the kids might have been from the first husband. In fact, this production shows how to use children on stage (in total contrast to Macbeth, playing in the theatre next door, which gets it so wrong). Don’t give them lines. Use them visually. Tennant’s Boseola has some of the best lines.

Chris New’s Cardinal wears white gloves throughout … and has powerful scenes where he thrusts his hand up his reluctant mistress’s skirt while forcing her on the bed, then later murdering her by having her kiss a poisoned bible. That was a good Renaissance Italy trick, but not one the Russians have picked up on yet. Excellent performances by both.

The other murdered woman … all the women die … is Cariola, the Duchess’s gentlewoman. I thought the cuts took away some of her pleading for mercy to the murderers (a pity) but maybe not. There was a lot of activity at the time.

Julia, the Cardinal’s mistress (Areth Ayeh)

The music is superb. The first half’s full version of I Put A Spell On You is the best I’ve heard the song, sung by Julia (Areth Ayeh). In the second half, Joan Iyiola sings a keening wordless song which sounds African,  accompanied by “the madmen” that Ferdinand has surrounded her house with.

Joan Iyiola as The Duchess with dancers

After what we thought a somewhat dodgy Macbeth the night before, this was a first rate production in every area … but …

But did they need that sea of blood?

The murderers take Cariola (Amanda Hadingue) and the Duchess (Joan Iyiola)

The murder of the Duchess and Cariola is a massively powerful scene, but it’s strangulation, not stabbing.

When the carcass of the beast is first impaled by Ferdinand’s dagger, it is belly forward, the knife goes up between the legs, and it looks close to the animal’s sexual organs. Several other reviews describe it as a “bull” , but it is singularly lacking in a bull’s most obvious characteristic, and has a distended belly. The programme describes it thus:

We looked at spaces and architecture that were very masculine and male-dominated and which had a brutal, harsh, physical and competitive quality to them  … a brutal-looking underground gym, an old derelict and crumbling sporting stadium and an abbatoir … Central to the idea is the carcass of an oversized and abstract bull which symbolically sits in the space throughout the piece. A creature of enormous power and strength, yet trussed up and dragged through the space
Naomi Dawson, designer

Look at the pictures above of the legs, where they join. It looks like a female animal to me, and memories of stabbing between the legs in Maria Aberg’s production of The White Devil, reinforces that. Subliminal? Deliberate? I never saw it as a “bull” abstract, or even emasculated. Anyway, from there on the stage fills with blood. I don’t think anyone actually got spattered, but they did have blankets and some held them up to their chins. The cast all end up writhing in blood and soaked in it as the vicious males finally fall upon each other and everyone is killed.

Too much blood … Ferdinand (Alexander Cobb) and The Cardinal (Chris New)

My point is that in the blood-free part one, the actors, dancers and musicians totally succeeded in creating all the necessary menace and fear. Did the blood increase that? Not to me, though because there was so much swilling about, it wasn’t sickening. They were doing fine without all the gore, and I think that a moderate amount of gore when people were stabbed etc, might well have been more frightening than wallowing in it.

TV monitor in the lobby after the performance as people leave. That’s how much blood there was.

A small minus point. One of the most powerful scenes in the play is when Ferdinand in total darkness asks the Duchess to kiss his ringed finger. When she points out that it’s cold, he claims (as the lights go up) that it’s the severed hand of Antonio. Trouble is from the front stalls we couldn’t see the hand at all. Hold it aloft! Only later is it thrown to Boseola.

All in all, a great RSC production. As in 2017, the Swan Theatre starts the year ahead of its larger sibling theatre next door. An odd thing, I always think “colour blindness” should be avoided for characters who are cast as close relatives. But it was only after placing the photos in this review that I actually noticed the incongruity of ethnicity for alleged “twins.” That’s how convincing they were.

I’m very tempted to five stars … but all that blood really was OTT. But we have seen such great performances in such a vibrant, visceral setting. I don’t award half stars (though 4.5 is probably right) so … no … yes … no … yes!

*****

MUSIC CREDITS

How can the RSC persist in pages of acknowledgments … images, patrons, the company yet fail to credit I Put A Spell On You which occupied a brilliant two minutes stage time? It was written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins in 1955. The best-known (best?) version was by Nina Simone in 1965, and that’s the one this version referenced.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
4.5
Katy Roberts, The Reviews Hub ****1/2
4
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph, ****
Domenic Maxwell, The Times ****
Maxie Szalwinska, Sunday Times, ****
3
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ***
Tom Wicker, The Stage ***
2
Michael Davies, What’s On Stage **

LINKS TO REVIEWS ON THIS BLOG

THE DUCHESS OF MALFI
The Duchess of Malfi, 2012 by John Webster, Old Vic
The Duchess of Malfi – 2014 by John Webster, Wanamaker Playhouse

MARIA ABERG
Fantastic Mr Fox, Nuffield, Southampton 2016
As You Like It, RSC 2013
The White Devil, RSC 2014
Doctor Faustus, RSC 2016

JOAN IYIOLA
Boudica, Globe 2017 (Alonna)
The White Devil, RSC 2014
The Roaring Girl,  RSC 2014
Arden of Faversham, RSC 2014

NICHOLAS TENNANT
All’s Well That Ends Well RSC 2013

ALEXANDER COBB
The Seagull, by Chekhov, Nuffield, Southampton 2013 (Konstantin)