Jodie Whittaker and Paul Ready deliver strong performances in an otherwise uneven new take on The Duchess [Of Malfi] at the Trafalgar Theatre
““I don’t suppose you would suck my cock?”
It’s a been a goodly while since we last saw Jodie Whittaker on the UK stage – Antigone at the National in 2012 to be precise – so it is a bit of a coup for Zinnie Harris’ The Duchess [Of Malfi] (itself seen in Edinburgh in 2019) to land the 13th Doctor for its West End. It’s a pleasingly weighty role for Whittaker to get her teeth into but there’s something about the adaptation that doesn’t quite work.
Harris directs as well as adapting and there’s a sense that she might have benefitted from an outside eye on her work. John Webster’s iconic revenge tragedy has been relocated to a hazily contemporary setting but its roots remain firmly Jacobean and this split focus means that the production never quite settles on a tone, lurching between Tarantino tribute to dark farce to classic drama with modern songs.
We still get the strident misogyny that governs so much of the action. Whittaker’s assured and assertive Duchess seizes the opportunity to live freely after the death of her husband but her wicked brothers are determined that that won’t be the case, particularly once she takes a new husband and has twins. Much of this is played for comic effect, the intrinsic creepiness of the Cardinal (Paul Ready in fine form) and Ferdinand (Rory Fleck Byrne as her own twin) garnering guffaws from the audience.
Post-interval, things get a lot darker but in a way that jars, rather than flowing naturally from the attitudes already shown to us. Torture is deployed to devastated effect, Jamie Macdonald’s punishing video work playing out on the stark edges of Tom Piper’s utilitarian design, which connects to the Tarantino-esque introductions of names being projected onto the wall. But throw in a ton of expositional dialogue and Oğuz Kaplangi’s pretty but random songs, and we’re in danger of losing some of the incisiveness of Harris’ commentary on toxic masculinity and the entitlement of the privileged throughout the ages.
