By Kristen Nevarez Schweizer

Under the stars at the Old Globe Theatre, come and see William Shakespeare’s uncomfiest play. If you’ve never heard the term ‘problem play’ applied to Shakespeare, it’s a term scholars use for the handful of his works that refuse to behave. The problem plays are not quite comedies, not quite tragedies, and their endings are neither satisfying nor cathartic. Vivienne’s Benesch’s production of Measure for Measure doesn’t try to resolve the problematic elements. If anything, it enhances them, forcing one to sit in them. Benesch says, “Let its contradictions and tonal shifts be part of the experience.”

I (unapologetically) spoil plays that are over 400 years old. Long story short: Vienna’s Duke vanishes, handing his power to his cousin, the respected Angelo. Within a few scenes, Angelo sentences a man to death for fornication, and propositions the same man’s sister, Isabella, for sex in exchange for her brother’s freedom. To further complicate the matter, Isabella is a novice (a future nun), and the missing Duke is hiding, disguised as a Friar, in her brother’s prison. 

The play asks who actually holds power, what virtue is, and whether justice exists — then offers no answers. It’s a show before its time, matching the dissonant prestige dramas of television today.

Interestingly, the hypocritical Angelo is drawn to Isabella’s luminous goodness. She escapes his sexual exploitation, yet her goodness also attracts the love of her savior, the Duke. She hopes to enter a convent, yet in the final Act, the Duke proposes to Isabella twice. The text offers her no response. She has no line or stage direction indicating acceptance or refusal. Isabella is silent, and it’s an argued-over silence. Many directors fill the blank space with a kiss to match Shakespeare’s tidy comedies. Others have Isabella recoil, walk away, or stand frozen while everyone else celebrates around her.

Each ending to Measure for Measure is a commentary, and I’ll leave Benesch’s choice as a surprise. (For now.)

My personal question while watching this show is why anyone thinks William Shakespeare actually wrote it. A fringe-but-delicious theory, argued by scholar John Hudson and recently amplified by Jodi Picoult’s recent novel By Any Other Name, suggests that some of Shakespeare’s work — including this — was actually written by Emilia Bassano Lanier. Bassano Lanier was the first woman in England to publish a book of original verse under her own name, and her collection has an odd resemblance to Shakespeare’s romances. 

This conspiracy came to my mind when Isabella (played by the compelling Amelia Pedlow) is cornered into the decision to give up her body for her brother’s life. She asks the audience:

“To whom should I complain? Did I tell this, / Who would believe me?”

Such a question has reached the American zeitgeist in recent decades, but is out of character for Shakespeare’s life experience. I’m not asking anyone to revise the Norton Anthology, but it’s a theory to bat around with your friends during intermission. (If you’re discussing, also consider: this play pulls from untranslated Italian source material within the reach of the bilingual, traveled Bassano, while Shakespeare was a glove-maker’s son who likely never left England. Hmmm!) 

As for the production itself, Calvin Leon Smith’s Lucio is a gift. Apparently, this is his first Shakepearen performance in a decade, and you would never know it. He handles the language with mood rather than recitation, finding the gossip-loving humor and self-preserving humanity in every line. A special nod to replacement performer Robert Lenzi (recently terrific in The Old Globe’s The Hombres and memorable in Houston Broadway Theatre’s revised American Psycho: The Musical), who has stepped in as Claudio and delivered a persuasive performance as the besotted brother. Amelia Pedlow is well cast as the leading lady; she brings power alongside vulnerability, and likability to her piety.

“O, it is excellent / To have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous / To use it like a giant.“

As expected from The Old Globe’s outdoor festival stage, this show is gorgeously lit (by designer Russell H. Champa.) Set designer Lex Liang ambitiously draws your eye up to a third-story window and the architecturally lit trees above. His castle is well-populated by the USD’s Shiley Graduate Theatre Program. The enthusiastic graduate student ensemble is always a bright spot in The Old Globe’s Summer Shakespeare Festival.

You can catch Measure for Measure, playing through July 12. I am already looking forward to the upcoming Much Ado About Nothing running August 2-30.