The TImes
by Benedict Nightingale, 4 January 1996

Cheek by Jowl's Edwardian period revival of Webster's great, gruesome tragedy seemed strikingly original when I saw it in Oxford in October but after three months on the road it has grown into something that is extraordinary bordering on astonishing. I am tempted to talk you through Declan Donnellan's production scene by scene, pointing out how and why it differs from conventional stagings. But since that would send my review careening onto page 94 let me evoke just once encounter between Anastasia Hille's Duchess and her twin, Scott Handy's Ferdinand.

It is Act III, scene ii. Duke Ferdinand, furious at his sister's downmarket marriage, sidles into her bedroom and not too subtly suggests that she kill herself. He gives her a dagger, threatens and terrorises her, and then disappears bug eyed into the night, leaving her wanly protesting , "you are too strict". She is passive ; he is a hyperactive maniac. He is evil; she is good. At any rate that is how the encounter is usually played.

Not here. Hille's Duchess slaps Ferdinand to the floor, leaps onto him, menaces him with the dagger, then laughs, coolly pours herself a Scotch, continues doing her hair and makes mocking monkey noises while he wildly blusters and bangs into the furniture. Then the mood switches and she is cuddling and comforting him before it switches again and he makes a blundering exit haplessly mouthing promises never to see her again.

Incredible, absurd, an extreme example of the way contemporary directors impose 20th Century psychology on Jacobean melodrama? Well, go and see for yourselves. It may sound as if Donnellan is more trick cyclist than responsible producer; but that is far from the effect in the theatre. Rather you feel you are witnessing the half comic, half horrifying death throes of a dark deep bond that perhaps only twins can fully understand. What Donnellan does is substitute human richness for theatrical stereotype.

After all, must the Duchess act as if she has just parachuted in not just from some nicer family but from some higher moral plane? And must her brother seem strong rather than weak because he is powerful? Nowadays we expect directors to ask similar questions of Shakespeare and would be amazed to get a wetly virtuous Cordelia or a straightforwardly villainous Goneril. Hille and Handy take corrective interpretation a long way: but never over the top.

She cuts a cool, confident figure and, though you also sense a longing for affection and simplicity, it is second nature to her to intimidate and not be intimidated. When that mad nocturnal prowler, her brother, reveals the hand that he has given her is severed and cold, what does she do after she has winced and thrown it aside? Why, pick it up and drop it into the wastepaper basket, as any house proud princess should.

Hille's is a wonderful performance -- tough yet sensitive, sardonic yet packed with ruefully observed pain -- and Handy's is very good. The impression his big, soft face gives is of an overgrown tot floundering in a world he can smash but never comprehend. Behind the strutting, the tears and the obsessive game-playing -- what did he and his overbearing sister get up to in the nursery? Handy suggests someone profoundly bewildered by his own emotions. How can he be so angry, so bitter, so vengeful?

Much has improved since Oxford in October. Paul Brennen, as the third of these nightmare siblings, adds a certain agony of soul to his portrait of Himmler in Cardinal's purple. As the Duchess' illicit husband Antonio, Matthew Macfadyen suggests a nervousness of heart and with it, an uneasy marriage. The worry, if any is George Anton's performance as the spy cum assassin Bosola, a character whose mix of the ambition driven and conscience stricken has attracted many a major actor. Couldn't he be more, well, interesting?

Yes, but if so, wouldn't that distract attention from the dysfunctional family at the centre? It is a question for Declan Donnellan and his cast to ponder as they perform in London and then continue what promises to be, even by Cheek by Jowl's standards, a surpassingly successful world tour.