Measure for Measure: Another off-the-scale RSC production

It is as if we are staring at the waiting room of an asylum. The bright white lighting forcing its way onto the stage reminds us that there is, or at least should be, nowhere for characters to hide from their misdemeanours. This is how the Royal Shakespeare Company choose to introduce Measure for Measure: a play about battling to expose others’ truths or risking being found out yourself.  

The production begins with a screened montage of famous sex scandals – the likes of Clinton and Lewinsky, Prince Andrew and Matt Hancock appearing. When our gaze shifts back to the stage, a desk has appeared, with Adam James’ Duke Vincentio sat behind it, looking, at least from where we were in our premium middle tier seats, like a politician about to make a confession to a nation.  

We learn that the Duke wants to temporarily give up his position. Whilst his reasoning is never fully explained, one can infer from later scenes that this may be to cover up a sexual discrepancy. His successor, Angelo, played marvellously by Tom Mothersdale, decides that his first action will be to condemn a man, Claudio (Oli Higginson), to death for impregnating a woman outside of wedlock. In the opening five minutes of the production, one can already sense the running theme that men might be a little too hasty to think not with their heads, but with their crotches. Director Emily Burns does not want to dispel our suspicions, inserting into the play a quote from one of Shakespeare’s sonnets: “All men are bad, and in their badness reign.”

It is like Burns wants the characters to feel that they are being observed […] much like a politician making a TV broadcast

When we are introduced to Claudio, indeed locked in what seems to be an asylum cell with looming glass walls, we are made to feel as though we are viewing his interactions through a two-way mirror. It is like Burns wants the characters to feel that they are being observed, even if they do not know who exactly they are being observed by, much like a politician making a TV broadcast.  

As the doomed man is lowered through a trap door, we are offered a deliberately jarring transition into a sunny countryside setting. Here we meet his sister Isabella (Isis Hainsworth). Her outfit reflects her gated surroundings: yellow and childlike. She is greeted by Claudio’s friend Lucio with the frankly brilliant remark: “Hail, virgin.” When Isabella speaks, it is in a naïve country bumpkin accent which, coupled with her costuming, proves that the RSC seem to think her a little unintelligent, with youthful chastity being championed as her main ‘strength’. Here is where this reviewer differs slightly in opinion from Stratford’s greatest minds. In 2025, is it not a little backwards to base a woman’s worth solely on how little sex she has? This is a particular shame given that Measure for Measure is in fact an excellent vehicle for exposing male hypocrisy and unleashing the female anger it provokes.   

When Isabella tries to get him to spare Claudio, Angelo is comically awkward, with Mothersdale stuttering and muttering to hilarious effect. It allows an audience to see the play’s villain as the charming, bumbling posh boy, the trait that has forged careers for the likes of Hugh Grant and Boris Johnson. You can feel the audience warming to him, even after he gives Isabella the disgusting ultimatum that she must sleep with him to save her brother’s life. This is what we see so often in the modern politician – charisma seems to matter more than truthfulness and morality.   

The exploration of Claudio and Isabella’s relationship is underdeveloped, with a sickeningly cliché moment where they touch palms on either side of the glass prison wall

If Angelo is Hugh Grant though, is Isabella a little too Martine McCutcheon? Which is to say, do the RSC go overboard with trying to make these two class caricatures at opposite ends of a social hierarchy? In some ways, they just allow themselves to further patronise Isabella in front of their middle to upper class audience? They almost get away with it too, simply because of how brilliantly sly and nuanced Tom Mothersdale’s performance is.  

Without Mothersdale though, some of the male-female dynamics don’t seem quite as strong. The exploration of Claudio and Isabella’s relationship is underdeveloped, with a sickeningly cliché moment where they touch palms on either side of the glass prison wall. Hainsworth, though not at all without her moments across the production, does herself no favours with Isabella’s ear covering and groaning at Claudio’s pleas for her to accept Angelo’s deal, but some level of directorial culpability should also be taken for that.  

At the stroke of the interval however, comes glorious redemption for Emily Burns and her team. A sexual ruse has been orchestrated by Duke Vincentio – who, unbeknownst to Angelo, has been pulling the strings disguised as a friar (and part psychiatrist in this case). The result of this is displayed on an epic scale to the sound of Elvis Presley’s ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’. This then transitions into a female-led gospel of the same song, and it is just perfect. The idea of men blaming women for ‘tempting’ them is something that comes up quite a few times in the play and we still hear rhetoric like ‘he couldn’t help himself’ or ‘she was asking for it’ today. Both Shakespeare and Burns clock on to the fact that men really haven’t come that far since Adam and his folly in the Garden of Eden. It is quite an out of body experience to have these considerations, stirring music, and a fairly vivid sex scene to contend with all at the same time.        

As the Duke returns to power, images of Trump’s convoy for his UK state visit are projected out to us. Vincentio evidently looks forward to revealing his secret missions outside of the spotlight and finding moral resolutions for each of the characters, offering a form of the ‘world police’ mentality that US presidents love to adopt.  

Certainly, this staging has no qualms with using one of Shakespeare’s most mature and prevalent plays as an anti-establishment weapon. And it will make you furious

It is here that we are as much a TV audience to this action as we are a theatre one. Two minor cast members enter with cameras focused in on each character individually. As they gradually assemble to await their fate, their every flicker in expression is broadcast to the masses.

What this final sequence teaches us is that what enrages political figures the most is when someone else commits the same crimes as they do. As the RSC’s artistic directors point out, the play has been restaged “in a contemporary, corporate world, where Shakespeare’s themes of hypocrisy and corruption remain unsettlingly relevant”. Certainly, this staging has no qualms with using one of Shakespeare’s most mature and prevalent plays as an anti-establishment weapon. And it will make you furious. How dare those with such privilege and responsibility blatantly lie about their actions, ruining the livelihoods of those far more vulnerable than they are? We live in a world where powerful men are still allowed to do despicable things for their own personal gain. Shakespeare, even in the title of this play, wanted to believe that actions had consequences, but how can we even be sure of that anymore?