REVIEW – MEASURE FOR MEASURE
Image: Photo: Katy Green Loughrey
Set in a place redolent of Kings Cross, director Richard Hillier and the Sydney Shakespeare Festival present Measure for Measure. It is labelled by some scholars as one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem plays’ with shifts between comedy and darker, more complex ideas.
With all-round excellent performances including Danielle Baynes (Isabella), John Grinston (Duke Vincento) and Richard Mason (Escalus), James Townsend’s portrayal of the bawdy Lucio is the stand-out performance here.
Measure for Measure remains a play for our time offering endless questions with no easy answers as it peels back the rancid layers of excess, corruption and licentiousness we encounter in contemporary Western society.
In its seventh year, the Sydney Shakespeare Festival features King Lear (perhaps Shakespeare’s greatest tragedy) and Measure for Measure (a much lesser known problematic tragicomedy) on alternate nights. (SC)
Until Dec 21, The Old Fitzroy Theatre, 129 Dowling St, Woolloomoolo, $21-39, 1300 307 264, sitco.net.au
BY SAM CRASSWELLER
