LA Review: 'Measure for Measure'

"Measure for Measure," Shakespeare's dark comic examination of inverted justice and mercy, has seen many approaches through the centuries. But it's hard to imagine another one as audaciously entertaining as this striking revisionist production, which takes considerable liberties and somehow gets away with it.

Resetting the action in 1968 California, director Ellen Geer deploys numerous tactics to make the Bard jibe with her concept. Purists will balk at the inserted 20th-century terms, but they serve Shakespeare more than not. Duke Vincentio (an assured Aaron Hendry) is now Governor Vincentio, his expository scene preceded by the huge cast staging a peace rally complete with protest signs, folk songs, bellbottoms, and paisley (designer Erica D. Schwartz provides fun period costumes).

This update, like the interstitial era songs performed on the upstage right balcony, sometimes feels decorative but more often grabs our attention. Certainly the central narrative benefits, tradition dovetailing with invention to accessible, engrossing effect. Hendry's bipolar turn as the straight-arrow, bespectacled Vincentio and his comically somber disguise of Friar Lodowick is another of the actor's utterly correct portrayals. Willow Geer, whose range deepens from season to season, nails the requisite balance of piety and fire as novitiate heroine Isabella. Her scenes with Hendry, sensitive Colin Simon as Isabella's condemned brother, Claudio, and particularly Adam Mondschein, who as the villainous Angelo traces a subtle inner spiral that recalls the late actor David Dukes, are worth the show.

So too is Gillian Doyle as a gender-switched Escalus, her red power suit, plum-toned throatiness, and lighthouse eyes echoing many a Sacramento doyenne. Melora Marshall, never better, is a mustachioed, polyester-clad morph of Harvey Keitel and Denny Terrio as comic instigator Lucio. Gerald C. Rivers makes hilarious mincemeat of Pompey, here a streetwise pimp, with the textual changes to prove it, just as Earnestine Phillips seems tailor-made for the role of Mrs. Overdone, now a brazen subversive with a massive Afro. Savannah Southern-Smith as a smartly understated Mariana, Thomas Ashworth as a wildly manic Elbow, Leo Knudson as a keenly chortling Froth and Paul Turbiak as a quietly eloquent jailer are other standouts, with Charlie Howell making a woozy feast of his cameo as Barnardine.

There will be those who balk at the production. At the reviewed performance, some attendees were overheard grousing about racism and inappropriateness—and there lies the key to the show's effectiveness. When was the last time that "Measure for Measure" found audiences debating its merits as regards the here and now? Between the innate delights of the incomparable outdoor venue, which director Geer uses with knowing integrity, and the high degree of pertinence, all difficulties are but easy when they are subjected to the conviction that this unconventional take on a problem play demonstrates.

Presented by and at the Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum, 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga. June 2–Sept. 1. Schedule varies. (310) 455-3723 or www.theatricum.com.