The Duchess of Malfi Tour, 2000. Venues:

21–25 November Alhambra Theatre Bradford, West Yorkshire:
28 November-2 December Regent Theatre, Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire;
5–9 December Theatre Royal, Bath, Avon;
12–16 December Theatre Royal, Norwich, Norfolk;
w/b 15 January Theatre Royal Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland;
23–27 January Lyceum Theatre Sheffield, South Yorkshire;
30 January-3 February New Victoria Theatre Woking, Surrey

The Duchess of Malfi

In the autumn of 2000 Richard Armitage appeared in his second Royal Shakespeare Company production, as Delio in John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy ‘The Duchess of Malfi’.

Opening at London’s Barbican Theatre on 10th November 2000 (two weeks late due to cast illness), it toured the UK before transferring to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, where it ran from 6th February to 3rd March 2001.

First performed around 1614 and based on a true story, Webster’s play concerns the secret marriage of the Duchess of Malfi to her steward, Antonio, and her grim fate at the hands of her twin, Duke Ferdinand, and her elder brother, the Cardinal. It is a brutal exploration of the politics of gender, family, misogyny and power which Gayle Edwards’ "raw and feverish" modern dress production invested with a "brittle contemporary feel" [1,2] .

The role of Delio is substantial; acting throughout as Antonio’s friend and adviser, he appears in nine of the play’s eighteen scenes. Delio is also an incompetent seducer who offers money to Julia, a married woman, in a failed attempt to persuade her to become his mistress (Act 2 scene 4).

Delio opens the play by welcoming his friend Antonio back from France, and to him fall its final lines, which look to the future in the installation of the eldest son of the Duchess and Antonio, both now slain, as the future ruler:

Richard Armitage as Delio in The Duchess of Malfi‘…………………Let us make noble use
Of this great ruin; and join all our force
To establish this young hopeful gentleman
In’s mother’s right. These wretched eminent things
Leave no more fame behind ‘em than should one
Fall in a frost and leave his print in snow:
As soon as the sun shines, it ever melts,
Both form, and matter. I have ever thought
Nature does nothing so great, for great men,
As when she’s pleased to make them lords of truth;
“Integrity of life is fame’s best friend,
Which nobly, beyond death, shall crown the end”’. [3]



Sources

[1] Independent on Sunday, 12th November 2000
[2] Financial Times, 14th November 2000
[3] John Webster, ‘The Duchess of Malfi’, Act 5, Scene 5

The taming of the Duchess of Malfi
The Duchess of Malfi
Barbican, London **

Michael Billington
@billicritic

Mon 13 Nov 2000 00.00 GMT
First published on Mon 13 Nov 2000 00.00 GMT



After superb productions for the Royal Shakespeare Company of Don Carlos and The White Devil, Gale Edwards comes up with a somewhat tame version of Webster's grisly classic. A modern-dress affair, with echoes of La Dolce Vita and Pulp Fiction, it fails to create a coherent world that can contain Webster's dark nihilism, oppositional faith and astonishing aphoristic poetry.

Part of the problem lies in Peter J Davison's design, dominated by a towering, glass-walled rectangular cage. It's fine for spectacular inserts such as the masque of madmen or an abattoir-like exhibition of human carcasses. But it cramps the action and its inner depths remain hidden from the side-stalls. Sue Willmington's costumes also obscure the play's crucial differences of rank. It's the Duchess's passion for her steward that precipitates events but here the sharp-suited Antonio seems as fashion-conscious as his silk-gowned employer. Even the surly spy, Bosola, appears to buy his black-leather macs at the same emporium as the crazily incestuous Duke Ferdinand.

What the production lacks is a convincing ambience or any real contest between corruption and virtue. The programme intriguingly suggests that Webster's Duchess is a Protestant martyr assailed by a wicked papistry. But although Aisling O'Sullivan's tall, red-haired Duchess is tender, loving and visually striking in her seductive lingerie, she misses the character's defiance. She is not helped by the inexplicable decision to cut Bosola's magnificent bellman's dirge. I am not asking for old-fashioned, boom-and-bust rhetoric, but a line such as "I am Duchess of Malfi still" cries out for something more than plaintiveness. The Duchess is not just a harassed widow: she is someone who greets violent death with the do-your-worst assurance of a true believer.

Having discovered a note of feminist resistance in The White Devil, Edwards strangely misses it here; even the device, once used by Philip Prowse, of bringing the Duchess back to haunt the final scenes puts pathos before tragedy. In fact, the actors who come off best are Colin Tierney as a crisply demonic, wolfish Ferdinand, Ken Bones as a Cardinal who has no compunction about copulating with his mistress against a cross, and Tom Mannion, who stepped into Bosola's bloody shoes at short notice. Mannion not only uses his Scottish accent to suggest an aggrieved outsider at a corrupt court but even makes the character's fits of conscience convincing. On a grander level, however, the production misses the vital Websterian contradiction in which destructive evil is countered by resilient goodness.

Until November 18. Box office: 020-7638 8891.

The Duchess of Malfi
Barbican Theatre 2000

Penned by John Webster, The Duchess of Malfi was first staged in 1614, a typical Jacobean tragedy in that there is a welter of characters, each of whom get at least one stab (forgive the pun) in a labyrinthine soap-opera plot to ham it up in the spotlight before they all meet a gruesome end in a thunderous climax.

Briefly, it's the tale of a duchess who steers her realm into security at a terrible price, namely having to marry her loved one and bear his children in secret all the while fending off the ultimately fatal political and sexual jealousies of her twin brother Ferdinand in cahoots with elder sibling, the Cardinal, and, really, just about everyone else at some point or other.

Anyway, as a play it is a notable one that is worth seeing if only for the strong plot built around one of the more enduring female characters from a pivotal period in English theatre.

Sadly, this is the very area in which this otherwise slick production, from the Royal Shakespeare Company, fails - and in the process very nearly drags down the entire show.

Some years ago I saw Juliet Stevenson do the Duchess in the West End. An extraordinarily busy woman at the time, she still found the energy to take the part by the horns in order to ensure she created a role to be remembered by. Success came her way - and the effect was pure dynamite as Stevenson hit on every level of the character yet never ran away from the play itself or hogged the stage at the expense of her co-players. Most importantly, she had a director she could trust.

At the Barbican, however, you'll find a director who either hasn't a clue or else who cannot be bothered to make the effort, and although newcomer Aisling O'Sullivan makes a brave showing as the Duchess, all focus is lost. Director Gale Edwards lets the cast run around like headless chickens, desperately trying to find some semblance of motive. As a result, the densely structured story starts to fragment and all we are left with is a sequence of undeniably powerful but dramatically inconsequent scenes.

Well, perhaps I'm being a little harsh. If one discards the concept of this being the Duchess's play, then Tom Mannion's Bosola has clearly escaped the miasma and this is his play. Indeed, there are those who would say that it was always intended to be Bosola's play. The man who is brought by Duke Ferdinand as a hatchetman to help keep watch on things finds his own conscience gradually doing a U-turn when he becomes embroiled in the sorry disintegration of the Duchess's precarious world.

I gather that Mannion, an actor of great presence, was brought in only two weeks previous to the opening to replace an actor who had fallen ill. Either way, he combines acid wit with a violent sense of honour to save the play.

Of great help is the set design that is all shadows and chrome, brimming with a post-industrial simplicity that lends a sinister, modern backdrop to the proceedings. Its flexibility is particularly effective when a stacked wall of taunting madmen is created and there is real shock when a wall slides away to reveal the horror of strung-up butchered bodies.

Still, you could always wait until another, better revival pops up.

Nick Awde