SEX, LIES AND TRANSVESTITES

By Diane FRANK

Measure for Measure is by all accounts Shakespeare’s most sexually charged play, and difficult to hold to form, being part comedy, part tragedy and in many respects self-contradictory and chaotic. The Duke of Venice takes a vacation from his office, charging a deputy with full power to enforce the laws, and encourages him to enforce vice laws that had been ignored for some 14 years. The deputy proceeds to his task with a will, shutting down houses of prostitution and sentencing fornicators to death where mercy might simply move ahead the date of the wedding. The temptations of power are compared to the temptations of the flesh, although the Duke, whose use of power is surely the most capricious seems oblivious to the irony when he sets matters right that he steered wrong.

Measure for Measure is regarded as a challenge to produce and a challenge to act in. Shakespeare is a challenge even in the best of circumstances. The phrasing of the bard is complicated to our ears, the language now archaic and when spoken with fluency at its natural pace as hard to parse as that of any rapper. And that’s with the great plays. Shakespeare had his lesser plays as well. But they still get produced because, well, he wrote them and some people just can’t resist a challenge. Shakespeare also has the problem in today’s lights that one can’t but help see it as acting. People in today’s real life don’t declaim and don’t soliloquize. We don’t roar and whisper in the same phrase. Imagine if you will Tom Cruise dangling on a wire in Mission Impossible launching into an existential rant about value of espionage and the degradation of human values.

This month sees a new production of Measure for Measure at our favorite local theatre: Cleveland Public Theatre - one of the organizations that I think makes Cleveland a good place to live - our little slice of the Village. This production of Measure for Measure had some grand ambitions behind it: an all male cast as it was originally performed, and six actors playing multiple parts, some appearing to share parts at different times, and only one of the cast playing just a male characters. Then there’s retitling the play to M4M, something that not so coyly alludes to gay personal ads- “Male for Male.” There was also the pre-show publicity, talking about how this play will illuminate something we are concerned about - gender roles and sexuality. This was followed by the current publicity campaign “Sex, Lies and Transvestites.”

Maybe there is one transvestite in the play - an early bit part is that of a prostitute. The costume and characterization makes one think of a modern ditzy drag queen, complete with gold platform heels. Otherwise, it was simply men playing women’s parts, with greater or lesser authenticity. Outside of the drag queen/prostitute there was no sign of camp, and none of the sense of wonder you might get when you see one of the Ballet Trocadero cast execute pointe work in an effecting and convincing way. One young woman in the audience found it impossible to suspend disbelief on seeing a man with pattern baldness showing playing a woman totally besotted and making cow eyes; she found it hilarious. My guess is that is an exceptional reaction.

There is one other point in the play where the drama is “queered,” also in an early scene. Here three men discuss the state of affairs in bawdy language. Originally set on the street or a tavern, putting them amorously under a big white sheet, that is a gay orgy, did get the audience’s attention. But then, nothing. Nothing transgressive, nothing that satirized gender roles, nothing where you cared at all whether the actors playing the parts were male or female. Perhaps the director thought not having the actors speak in higher pitched voices would somehow persuade us that this was really an all male world. It didn’t work, even for the actors who in moments of drama found their voices naturally rising in pitch and changing inflection to inhabit conventionally feminine interpretations. Otherwise, they were women with low voices.

This is then, not a production to go to because of the publicity. It’s one you go to because you’ll find good acting, cunning staging and sets, imaginative costumes. It’s one you can go to because Cleveland Public Theatre is a safe and friendly venue and you just want a night out that has some highbrow class to it.

I was taken by Ashley Davenport’s performances, his Escalus, Pompey and Sr. Francisca were distinct and showed a great range from subtle to farcical. John Paul Soto’s Isabella was affecting, his Barnadine a convincing drunk. Michael Mauldin’s Duke was suitably majestic, if more of a deus ex machina than anything else, an excuse to have a plot. Jenniver Sparano’s costumes were spare, versatile elegant and suggestive…except for “Mistress Overdone,” who stood out as too camp for the rest of the play.