Zinnie Harris's contemporary adaptation of John Webster's Jacobean play at the Trafalgar Theatre doesn't tone down its nastiness - and makes even less sense
Zinnie Harris's contemporary adaptation of John Webster's Jacobean play at the Trafalgar Theatre doesn't tone down its nastiness - and makes even less sense
“Apparently it’s not a laugh-a-minute”, said the woman in the row behind me as she settled down to watchin her first stage role in 12 years. That statement is putting it mildly: John Webster’s Jacobean bloodbath of misogyny is made not even one degree more cheerful in this contemporary adaptation by writer-director Zinnie Harris. Whittaker gives a powerful and passionate performance, but she faces an insurmountable challenge as Harris’s reworking makes less and less sense as it proceeds.
It’s vital not to engage in excessive nitpicking when a classic is presented in a new version; there are, for example, small segments of Robert Icke’s fails to convince from the start: how can a modern-day marriage be formally witnessed by a maid in a bedroom, for example? If we cannot trust a play’s architecture, we are not going to be convinced by the narrative that it supports.Whittaker arrives onstage in a slinky red dress to sing a sultry song about desire.
Tom Piper’s starkly institutional set makes even the Duchess’s supposedly luxury dwelling a prison, a house where doors are shut in desperation to keep secrets in and violence out. How we long in vain for the Duchess, proud in her own agency, to leave this warped place for good.
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