Measure for Measure review: So-called comedy is in need of radical reworking

A study of bankrupt morality and the abuse of power — in particular, sexual coercion — Measure for Measure really should be the Shakespeare play for our times. But this so-called comedy is so troubling, so perverse, so frankly nasty that it needs a strong directorial line or a radical reworking.

A recent Young Vic staging imagined a sexed-up city suffering a hypocritical puritan backlash; the Donmar did a shortened version twice in one evening, with the setting updated and the gender roles reversed second time round.

By contrast, RSC boss Gregory Doran serves up a ploddingly literal reading set in fin de siècle Vienna, in which the capricious actions of the Duke (Antony Byrne, a scurrying hobbit in his monk’s disguise) seem even less explicable than usual. His self-righteous deputy Angelo (Sandy Grierson) remains a cold fish throughout, even when attempting to seduce novice nun Isabella, his actions lacking requisite menace.

The moral decay of the city is predictably signalled by a couple of lazily swaggering whores in fishnets. The strongest scene is the one between Lucy Phelps’s expressively wracked Isabella and her brother Claudio (impressively natural James Cooney), condemned to death by Angelo. Comedy exchanges between sundry bawds, tapsters, criminals and dimwit constables drag terribly.

The first half is so long and so dull that the absurdities of the second half — the infamous bed-swap, the find-the-lady game to provide an executed prisoner’s head — are positively welcome. Doran lets the ending play out in all its wilful cruelty, though, with only a few aghast reactions from Phelps’s Isabella to leaven the horridness. Unforgiveable, really.

In rep to January 16 (barbican.org.uk)