Philip Kerr Excels in 'Measure for Measure'

STRATFORD, Conn.--Picture this: President Nixon, in the face of rampant corruption and immorality, finds that he can no longer govern. In accordance with the 25th Amendment of the Constitution, he declares himself "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office," and announces his intention of going abroad. Spiro Agnew thus becomes Acting President. Long known as a preacher of puritanism. Agnew starts a major campaign against pornography and prostitution, but eventually is himself drawn into criminal conduct. Nixon meanwhile, instead of skipping the country, takes a leaf from G. Gordon Liddy, dons a disguise, and travels around hither and yon, eavesdropping and generally keeping the citizenry under secret surveillance. When things reach an impasse. Nixon whips off his wig and moustache, reveals himself to the nation, and, issuing a few executive decrees, smilingly sets things aright, though dark clouds can be seen on the horizon.

The parallels are far from exact, but this scenario is roughly what we find in Measure for Measure, with which the American Shakespeare Theatre (the word 'Festival' has just been dropped from its name) has opened its 19th season. In choosing the play (not done here since 1956) long before the Watergate hearings, director Michael Kahn proved himself uncannily prophetic.

No other play by Shakespeare has elicited such a wide spectrum of appraisals. It has become customary to group the work with the two that immediately preceded it--Troilus and Cressida and All's Well That Ends Well--as "dark" or "unpleasant" or "problem" comedies. The 19th century was generally repelled by Measure, Coleridge going so far as to brand it "the only painful part" of Shakespeare's output and applying to it such words as "odious," "disgusting," and "horrible." Twentieth-century minds have been much more intrigued by the play--some proclaiming it a masterpiece, which it is not.

The work's defenders are rightly fascinated by the treatment of the issues, the "problems" raised--such as justice, mercy, creation, death, restraint, self-knowledge. These are serious intellectual matters, always worthy of exploration. The "measure" of the title seems to signify not only the Hebraic eye-for-an-eye mentality but also the ancient Greek virtue of moderation.

THE PLAY is, I suppose, best termed a tragicomedy. But this hybrid is not homogeneous. For all the philosophic insight, the dramaturgy is faulty. The first half of the play shows the stuff of tragedy, although the work contains not a single character of real stature. When Shakespeare boxes himself into a corner half way through, his personages cease to be rounded--if inconsistent--characters; he takes the Duke-Nixon outside the play and turns him into a sort of divine puppeteer who pulls his strings whimsically, and he winds up with an opera buffa finale that is in a different world altogether.

People have found this person or that a hero or heroine. I see none at all. In fact, nobody in the roster strikes me as an admirable character. In addition, the work suffers from the fact that the quality of its language drops off markedly in the second half. Still, just as Twelfth Night was far superior to As You Like It, which it followed, so Measure for Measure was a vast improvement over All's Well (from which Shakespeare took over the device of substituting a bedmate in the dark). And one can only respect a director and cast who tackle a challenging work that, as drama, can never succeed.

At the outset, John Morris's harp chords and sustained flute convey an ominous mood appropriate for the 16th-century Vienna where "quite athwart goes all decorum." Michael Kahn has added a brief prologue that introduces us to some of the unsavory people in the city--including a blind beggar, a pickpocket, a legless cripple. There is no point in trying to avoid the play's prevailingly rancid taste. Kahn has abridged the text a little, so that the show has a running-time of two and a half hours.

The prime mover in the play is the Duke, who after many years of lax rule turns over the reins to his deputy Angelo. But those who equate the Duke with the Christian God are surely in error--unless God is scheming, deceitful, mendacious, irresponsible, fallible, and not without a streak of cruelty. The role is a flawed attempt at the kind of semi-divine authority-figure that Shakespeare would eventually limn so wonderfully as Prospero in The Tempest.

Lee Richardson, an estimable actor back here for the fourth consecutive season, takes a valiant fling at the part. His "sword of heaven" soliloquy is neatly spoken, discreetly underlined by one horn, then a second horn, harp, and flute. But Richardson is most effective in finding humorous aspects in the role, such as when, on donning a monk's disguise, he mimies Friar Peter's rolling of the hands. (Shakespeare had already used the ruler-in-disguise device in Henry V, when the king wanders incognito among his troops just before the Battle of Agincourt.)

THE PLAY'S chief interest, however, lies in the characters of Angelo, the novitiate Isabella, and her brother Claudio. The ironically named Angelo condemns Claudio to death for impregnating his fiancee Juliet, Isabella pleads for her brother's life: and Angelo, his lust aroused, promises to spare Claudio only if she will sleep with him. Despite Claudio's imploring, Isabella refuses to surrender her chastity, but goes along with the trick of letting Angelo's long-ago-jilted fiancee Mariana take her place in his bed.

The Angelo of Philip Kerr, who was graduated from Harvard a decade ago and who shone so splendidly in the Roman plays here last summer, is the most memorable feature of this Measure for Measure. Kerr is visually arresting--garbed in black, craggy of mien, and as completely bald as Sibelius. He provides a remarkable portrait of a strict-constructionist (who loves to carry a lawbook in his hand), of a principled man rather surprised at his own slide into treachery. In view of the play's "happy" ending. Kerr quite rightly makes Angelo not an arch-villain but a probably redeemable sinner. His soliloquies are exemplary. Telling too are his deliberate movements, his slow gait, his hesitation to accept the Duke's proffered symbol of authority, the kneading of his fingers, the wiping of his sweaty palms with a white handkerchief, and, especially, his intense eyes capable of burning like a pair of laser beams.

Isabella is often viewed as a sympathetic, saintly heroine, but I find her preposterous and unappealing. One should recall that, in Shakespeare's time, an official betrothal was considered legally binding. But it is hard to accept Isabella's willingness to see her brother executed for seducing his unofficial fiancee while condoning the prenuptial coition of Angelo and his former betrothed. Surely a novice in one of the most strict Catholic orders would share the Church's position against consummation before the marriage ceremony. And how does one square her extreme statement that "More than our brother is our chastity" with her decision, at play's end, to forsake the convent and wed the Duke? Still, her two lengthy interviews with Angelo, in the first half of the play, are, both intellectually and dramatically, the two great scenes in the work (partly adumbrated by Portia in The Merchant of Venice). Christina Pickles, in her debut with the AST, could use a wider vocal range: but she does manage to summon up a good deal of force in her second confrontation with Angelo.

Claudio is an ordinary, weak man-in-the-street, caught with his pants down: he is just about the only believable person in the play. Shakespeare was remiss in giving him only a couple of lines in the second half of the work, and, when he finally turns up alive after being reported dead, in having him and his sister Isabella say nary a word to each other. In the present production, however, this is just as well. Richard Backus '67, who was so fine recently in the Harvard Summer School Repertory troupe's Ah. Wilderness! and in Promenade All! on Broadway, shows himself totally unsuited--as yet--for classical acting. His delivery is unconvincing, and, when loud, skirts close to unintelligibility.

David Rounds brings plenty of verve to the role of Lucio, the quick-witted, cynical, slanderous libertine who bridges the gap between the aristocracy and the rabble. Wyman Pendleton imbues the aging counselor Escalus with warmth. And Alvah Stanley, with axe, rope and chains, is properly intimidating as the executioner Abhorson--a unique name that Shakespeare fashioned, in the manner of the pivot-word so common in Japanese poetry, by fusing 'abhor' and 'whoreson.'

THE LOW-LIFE comics in Measure for Measure come from Shakespeare's second drawer. Since the play is as smutty a text as he ever penned, director Kahn has helped the low-comedy scenes along with a considerable amount of bawdy byplay--such as the masturbatory caressing of a staff, the tossing about of a large rubber phallus, the snagging of a staff in a codpiece, the goosing of a tart with a loaf of bread, and the kneeing of an officer in the groin by a brothel-keeper. Ronald Frazier is amusing enough as Elbow, the malapropistic constable (a type better managed in the Dogberry of Much Ado About Nothing); and so is the clowning tapster Pompey of Rex Everhart, who has been doing such roles for the AST off and on since its first season. Gene Nye turns the disreputable Froth into a stuttering nincompoop that is vastly overdone; measure. Mr. Nye, please.

William Ritman has designed a fenestrated brick wall behind two pairs of stairs leading to a platform. Ingeniously hidden panels of prison bars quickly move into place for the jail scenes. Jane Greenwood, back for her seventh season, has worked up first-rate costumes, with two exceptions. The nuns of the Order of Saint Clare, to which Isabella aspires, are dressed in black habits, when they were particularly known for wearing white. I don't object to Isabella's wearing light blue, since she is still a novice; but her habit, covered with what seem to be dark smudges, is unbelievably ugly, and suggests that she has been laboring in the grease-pit of a gas station.

The play's only song, "Take, o take those lips away" (which also turns up in Beaumont and Fletcher's play Rollo, with music by John Wilson), is assigned by Shakespeare to a young boy, who serenades Mariana in the garden of her "moated grange." Instead of a solo ayre, John Morris has composed a pleasant madrigal for ten singers, which is later reprised offstage and, at the end, played by a brass choir, to round off a dissonant play with harmonious concords.

(Ed. Note--The drive to the picturesque American Shakespeare Theatre's grounds on the Housatonic River takes about two and a half hours via the Massachusetts Turnpike. Interstate 91, and the Connecticut Turnpike to Exit 32 or 31. Performances in the air-conditioned Theatre traditionally tend to begin promptly at either 2 p.m. or 8:30 p.m. There are free facilities for picnickers on the premises.)