Cuba on the cusp of revolution provides the backdrop for HenryDGodinez's streamlined and cogent staging of Measure for Measure with chicagoshakes. | kerryreid 👇
, it’s hard to top Robert Falls’s dark take-no-prisoners 2013 production at the Goodman, which reimagined Vienna as Times Square, circa the late 1970s. But Henry Godinez’s streamlined and vibrant production at Chicago Shakespeare comes pretty damn close.
The Duke of Havana has his doubts about what’s going on around him. So of course he decides the best thing to do is to go undercover as a monk, leaving the city in the hands not of his chief judge, Escalus , a Black woman, but in those of his deputy, Angelo , a lighter-skinned man whose revolutionary bent doesn’t hide his contempt for the debauchery around him.
In an interview in the program, Godinez highlights the sexism and racism/colorism that pervades even the most publicly high-minded of revolutionary movements. Caught up in Angelo’s new insistence on enforcing Havana’s harsh laws is Claudio and his pregnant fiancee, Julietta .
The only thing that might dissuade him is Claudio’s sister Isabel , who visits him to beg mercy for her brother, only to find herself on the receiving end of an indecent proposal. With the help of Gudahl’s Duke, Isabel is able to work a typical Shakespearean “bed trick” on Angelo, expose his own secret, and save Claudio’s life. Further trickery involving the prison Provost also throws Angelo off the scent of the counterplotters.
The production moves with frightening speed from the brightness of the cabaret to the dankness of the prison, both worlds captured equally well by Rasean Davonté Johnson’s scenic and projection designs and María-Christina Fusté’s lighting.The most sobering interlude involves prisoner Barnardine . A lifer, his jailers believe he’d take the deal to die rather than continue his time in a living hell.
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