There is wiggle room for actors and directors to figure out just how much incestuous sexuality to play in John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi," and Michael Kahn's production at the Shakespeare Theatre takes it to a very creepy point. The basic issue in this Jacobean revenge tragedy is that the Duchess, a young widow, wants to remarry, and her two powerful brothers wish she wouldn't. One brother is a cardinal, so his interest in his sister's chastity could be called professional. For the other brother, Duke Ferdinand, it's personal.

Kahn's production creates a first impression of Ferdinand as a big spoiled baby. How else would you describe someone who gallops with minions on extravagantly bejeweled toy horses, and who gets snippy when his courtiers don't laugh strictly on cue? Ferdinand is played by Donald Carrier, who is tall and lean and sports a mop of long blond hair pulled back, making him a reasonable physical match for Kelly McGillis as the Duchess (the characters are twins). Carrier plays Ferdinand as a bit of a diva; his walk is a strut that can't be classified as masculine or feminine yet is undeniably sexual. When he passes a ring to a steward named Antonio, Carrier holds it in his teeth. His provocative Ferdinand clearly expects it to be received the same way.

McGillis is robust as the Duchess, a noble, sensual widow whose life hasn't ended with her husband's. The Duchess marries in secret the moment after her brothers lecture her not to, having set her eye on Antonio (Robert Tyree, who makes the character attractive, kind, innocent and bland). The Duchess and Antonio maintain a secret yet lovely marriage for several years despite the spying presence of a peevish soldier of fortune named Bosola, hired by Ferdinand to keep an eye on his sister. But such secrets can't be kept forever, and as they tumble out, the body count -- with Bosola as the instrument -- begins.

The decadence of the court is suggested by Walt Spangler's dark, opulent set (abstract and cleverly functional) and Robert Perdziola's lavish, richly textured costumes. The actors are thick with fabric; Ed Gero, as the Cardinal, is garbed in crimson that's almost obscenely vibrant, and his thigh-high red leather boots make you think the worst right away. (Gero gives a terribly composed performance, nasty and relaxed as the wicked Cardinal plots murders and does lascivious things with his mistress.) Animal prints and fur trim abound, making the characters look like a fast, well-dressed crowd.

Yet the production stops short of the sort of the ripping, no-holds-barred savagery Kahn heaped onto Shakespeare's "Henry VI" a few years ago. And "The Duchess of Malfi" could certainly turn into that sort of macabre entertainment, since Webster includes sadistic turns and theatrically displayed corpses.

These moments are muted in Kahn's staging, as if ghastliness were beside the point. But it's not: The story is Bosola's, as much as any other character's, and the plot climaxes when he finally chokes on all the bloodshed he's wreaked.

Yet the sense of atrocity is faint at best as the death toll mounts. Even Andrew Long's Bosola -- sensibly rendered as bitter and intelligent, a scoundrel not quite past conscience and redemption -- generally seems indifferent to whatever stabbed or strangled figure happens to be lying on the floor.

Maybe murder is too easy a moral call to be fussed about (except by the Duchess; McGillis goes to pieces very well, with pride and pain mingling in her husky cries). Kahn's production is much stronger as it explores the strange territory between Ferdinand and the Duchess, and the show's defining scene comes when Ferdinand confronts his sister alone in her bedroom. The text of Ferdinand's hotheaded lecture is about reputation, but the performers' body language says something much deeper and more troubling. As Ferdinand, Carrier seems pulled in several directions at once, but mainly toward McGillis. The Duchess, given a torrent of emotion by McGillis -- whose only flaw is an occasional English accent that's hard to explain -- seems aware of and repulsed by her brother's dilemma. She manipulates and thwarts his dangerous anguish in a startling, daring gesture.

The play is not entirely structured around its title character, and the warped psychology is both fuzzily motivated and sensationalistic. There is comic relief near the end involving a befuddled doctor examining a round-the-bend Ferdinand, and it's so ungainly that even Floyd King, using gestures that seem borrowed from old horror films, can't tickle the scene to life.

Despite its awkwardness, the play has a burly strength, though Kahn taps into only a portion of the drama's power. It's as if he's taken pity on Ferdinand and his dark psychosexual issues, which of course makes the play sound up-to-the-minute. A standard line about Webster is T.S. Eliot's opinion that he "saw the skull beneath the skin," but death is not a palpable presence in this almost too-comfortable production: Life is. As the hungry performances by McGillis and Carrier make clear, this "Duchess" is powered by flesh.

The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster. Directed by Michael Kahn. Approximately 2 hours 40 minutes. Lighting by Amy Appleyard; sound, Martin Desjardins; composer, Adam Wernick. Through March 10 at the Shakespeare Theatre, 450 Seventh St. NW. Call 202-547-1122.
 

© 2002 The Washington Post Company
 

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'Malfi' is bloodless, but not lifeless
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Review: Shakespeare Theatre takes on Webster's gory play with surprising
subtlety.
By J. Wynn Rousuck
Sun Theater Critic
January 29, 2002
 

John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi is one of the gorier plays in English
literature. But though it's a so-called "tragedy of blood," there's no blood
visible in director Michael Kahn's intense production at Washington's
Shakespeare Theatre.

It's not that the requisite number of lives (eight) aren't lost. It's just that
we don't see any of the red stuff being spilled. This turns out to be
especially appropriate for a Jacobean revenge tragedy whose villains are
extremely cold-hearted and bloodless.

Indeed, Kahn's entire approach is refreshingly subtle. Instead of milking the
blood and guts aspect, Kahn introduces the ghost of the title character to
emphasize the sudden emergence of a conscience in the play's most intriguing
character, Bosola, a spy and paid assassin. The result turns a play overflowing
with revenge and murder into a haunting examination of a change of heart -
albeit one that comes too late.

The plot is set in motion when the greedy, conniving brothers of the widowed
Duchess of Malfi forbid her to remarry. To keep an eye on her, they arrange for
their spy, Bosola, to serve on her staff. But the Duchess, played with
sophistication and strength by Kelly McGillis, is not about to be ruled by her
selfish brothers. She secretly marries her household steward, Antonio (Robert
Tyree), and bears him three children.

As depicted by McGillis and the gentle, dignified Tyree, theirs is a model
marriage grounded in love. In short, they are the diametric opposites of the
Duchess' covetous, suspicious brothers: the lecherous Machiavellian Cardinal,
portrayed with a sinister chill by Edward Gero, and the Duchess' twin,
Ferdinand, portrayed by Donald Carrier as a spoiled rich boy who harbors more
than a healthy love for sis.

It's easy to go overboard with material like this - material that includes a
severed hand and a poisoned Bible. But Kahn achieves far more by suggestion
than blatancy. Ferdinand's lust for the duchess, for example, is conveyed
primarily by having Carrier hold her shawl in his arms, then discreetly inhale
its aroma. In a play in which the stage ends up littered with bodies, Kahn
allows smaller, telling moments to speak volumes.

If McGillis' Duchess is the play's tender heart, then Andrew Long's bitter,
jaded Bosola is so bloodless, he appears to have no heart at all. And that's
exactly why the interpolated ghost is so effective. When Bosola feels the first
prick of conscience and says, "Still methinks the Duchess/Haunts me," he is, in
fact, visited by her white-garbed spirit, who watches over much of the
remaining action.

Walt Spangler's dark set design, murkily lighted by Amy Appleyard, reinforces
the similarity between palace and dungeon in this drama. And Robert Perdziola's
lush, fur-trimmed brocade costumes never let us forget that unbridled excess
and greed is at the core of Webster's tragedy. (The Cardinal's thigh-high red
reptile boots are a lovely touch.)

The Duchess of Malfi is the Shakespeare Theatre's first foray into the work of
Webster, a young contemporary of Shakespeare's whom mainstream audiences may
know best from the 1999 Academy Award-winning movie Shakespeare in Love, in
which he is first seen as a malevolent boy toying with mice.

Kahn's carefully wrought production of Webster's most famous play lets us see
how this lad's sadistic sensibility evolved. And though the result is closer to
Titus Andronicus than Hamlet, Kahn deserves high marks for making it more
edifying than blood-curdling.
 

Copyright (c) 2002, The Baltimore Sun