The Duchess of Malfi, Old Vic, review
Charles Spencer reviews Eve Best in The Duchess of Malfi at the Old Vic.
Critical opinion has long been divided over the Jacobean dramatist John Webster. For some he is second only to Shakespeare, for others merely a master of cheap thrills and morbid neurosis.
Either way, there is no doubt that his best play, The Duchess of Malfi, is a superbly effective piece of theatre, mixing jolting shocks and pitch-black comedy with wonderful lines of ominous verse.
And in the character of the Duchess, who after marrying her steward is cruelly and ingeniously persecuted by her snobbish brothers and their malcontent henchman Bosola, the play offers one of the greatest of all roles for a classical actress.
The great Eve Best seizes all her chances here, giving a thrilling, sexy and often deeply moving performance in Jamie Lloyd’s gripping, atmospheric production.
Soutra Gilmour’s stunning design conjures up a dark Renaissance palace of gilded staircases, vertiginous pillars and flickering candlelight. The actors are sometimes masked and perform choreographed movements suggesting a dance of death, and the famous horrors, ranging from a severed hand to a poisoned Bible – which led George Bernard Shaw to dub Webster the “Tussaud Laureate” – are staged with ghoulish aplomb.
Best’s great achievement is that she brings a warm, glowing humanity to a play that could easily seem just one damnable thing after another. As she falls for, and seduces, her servant Antonio (Tom Bateman), she combines unbuttoned sensuality with mischievous humour. But as her persecution by her sadistic brothers grows ever more horrific she discovers tragic nobility. The tender moment when, knowing she is about to be killed, she instructs her waiting woman “to givs’t my little boy some syrup for his cold, and let the girl say her prayers ere she sleep” is almost unbearably moving, as is the courage with which she meets death by slow strangulation.
The play’s biggest structural failing is that the Duchess dies before the end of the fourth act, and the remainder of the play is little more than an over-the-top bloodbath. It is as if Shakespeare had killed off Cleopatra before her great final act.
Nevertheless, there is still much to admire. Harry Lloyd is in fabulously deranged form as the Duchess’s jealous twin brother Ferdinand, who clearly harbours incestuous desires. The scene in which he smothers her with furious kisses on her bed is at once exciting and repellent, and his later mad scenes – “I’ll go hunt the badger by owl-light” – are thrillingly over the top.
Finbar Lynch brings a deep chill to the role of the Duchess’s other brother, a sexually corrupt Cardinal, while Mark Bonnar powerfully captures the gnawing conscience of Bosola, who finally revolts against his masters. I just wish he would play down the thick Scottish accent. Whenever he opened his mouth I was reminded of PG Wodehouse’s observation that it is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine. The result was that I sometimes found myself giggling when I should have been gasping with dread.
Other review ratings:
THE GUARDIAN - ****
THE TIMES - ****
