Theatre Review: Women Beware Women

Women Beware Women, The Olivier Theatre (The National Theatre, London), 05/06/10

How do you solve the problem of revenge tragedy? We all know everyone but the super-virtuous will have to die at the end of the piece. Every character will meet his or her comeuppance in a suitably poetic manner which will mirror or distort their vices. The lascivious Duke must be killed in his bed; his ambitious mistress must die a whore's death; her idiot cuckold of a husband will die of shame or commit suicide; and the bawdy wealthy black widow who sits in the centre of this perverse web? She must fall spectacularly from grace and be trampled underfoot. All that will be left is the hired help who have been watching the whole degradating affair from the sidelines and the pious Cardinal who will relate the tale in order for it never to happen again. Why do audiences return to these seemingly self-righteous displays of what happens in godless, corrupt societies?

The answer is simple: we like the baddies. They are bold, charismatic and above all wittier and more likeable. It is no surprise we revel in their inevitable downfall - we have watched their ascent with the relish only an observer in the comfort of an auditorium seat can enjoy. At least, that's how it should be. Marianne Elliott's Fellini-inspired visual feast fails to arouse any kind of sympathy for the charicatures which prance and strut about in her modern version of Middleton's most misogynistic play. For all the sumptuous clothing and impressive staging, the production falls flat on its face in its attempt to reach an understanding of how and why corruption and sin is so attractive. Furthermore, for a play which so openly positions women in the role of corruptor and corrupted - both victim and perpetrator - there is absolutely no questioning of this belief nor juxtaposing modern attitudes with those presented in the text, despite what the audience is seeing in terms of costume and scenery. The result is a series of beautiful yet incongruous and confusing set pieces. Even the blood-spattered finale is stripped of its potential and replaced with a technically impressive dance number on a revolving stage. By this point, though, the audience is so disengaged from the action and subtext that people are willing to stop thinking and just enjoy the spectacle of it all.

As far as the performances are concerned, it is difficult to ascribe blame. In most cases the talent is blindingly obvious - Harriet Walter, Harry Melling, Nick Blood, and Raymond Coulthard give amazingly watchable performances as well as they can, and Samuel James is the most entertainingly sinister Messenger in theatre history. However, Elliott's refusal to engage properly with the characters' individual struggles causes tension between the text and the performances, while some of the cast simply have no clue what to do and resort to pantomime villainy, as in the case of Richard Lintern, or monotonous whining, like Samuel Barnett. It is difficult to tell Vanessa Kirby and Lauren O'Neil apart, not aided by playing two versions of the same character; and the whole shambles is finally stripped of any remaining credibility when Chu Omambala's Cardinal storms in with great bombast but little control of his diaphragm: I can't help but wonder if he was directed to play shock and disgust at Lintern's licentiousness a little too literally. In any case, it was all I could do to stop myself bursting out with laughter. I was sat in the front row, and there would have been no escape.

If it were not for the fact that I had previously studied the play, I would have been hard pressed to relate the actual story. Some people in a palace talk a bit, have an orgry and then kill each other. I could have bought that on DVD for a lot less. All in all, the production was a mess, albeit an impressively designed one. A case for a balance between style and substance.