Rucker's 'Measure' flows like the river nihilism

COURTESY YALE REPRETORY THEATRE Abshorson (Graham Shiels, DRA '99) and Pompey (Jim Hart, DRA '99) don the S&M gear for some nihilistic experiences.

Like so much about this production of Measure for Measure, the program is clever, visually arresting, and ambitious--at times appealingly, at times pretentiously--in its desire both to provoke and to instruct. Excerpts from the Starr Report lie alongside a section of scripture gainsaying adultery, an image of the crucifixion is juxtaposed with the photo of a man pierced by nipple rings and a spike that runs through his nasal septum, and lines from Dallas's J.R. hover above a quote from Harold Bloom. J.R.'s comment reads, "Come to my bed, or I'll have your young and innocent lover sent to jail on a drug charge." Substitute "brother" for "lover," "the chopping-block" for "jail," and "fornication charge" for "drug charge," and you encapsulate the extortive use of power to obtain sex that drives Shakespeare's plot. Bloom's statement conveys how disturbing the play can be: "I do not know any other eminent work of Western literature that is nearly as nihilistic as Measure for Measure."

Under Mark Rucker's direction, the Drama School's graduating class puts together an often dazzling, always skillful performance of Shakespeare's comedy. As good as this Measure for Measure is, there's something irritating about its treatment of the nihilism to which the program so eagerly alerts us. The only way the more lurid and exciting aspects of Rucker's production make sense is if one presupposes the inevitability of nihilism and takes the play as sharing this presupposition. The play isn't about what happens after decency and innocence become meaningless; rather it's about the exposure of a state-of-affairs in which such a demolition of decency and innocence occurs.

"But who the hell cares?" you ask. The Vienna of this production is a dissolute, heavy-breathing, and now and then orgasmically wailing place, filled with leather-clad S&M devotees and presided over for most of the time by good-looking authoritarian technocrats in beautiful business suits. In the opening scenes, Duke Vincentio (John Ecklund, DRA '99) retires from office, recognizing the need to enforce the laws that he's let slip for the last 14 years but strangely refusing to do so himself. He installs Angelo, played with a mix of tortured moralism and curdled cynicism by Adrian LaTourelle, DRA '99, as his deputy. Angelo quickly imprisons Claudio (Chris Henry Coffey, DRA '99/Graham Shiels, DRA '99) for breaking Vienna's law against fornication. Claudio's novitiate-nun sister, Isabella (Adrienne Dreiss, DRA '99/Joey Parsons, DRA '99) finds that the only way her brother can avoid execution is if she surrenders her chastity to Angelo. The Duke, having disguised himself as a friar, contrives to save Claudio and rescue Isabella.

Ecklund's Duke is the most difficult character in the play to get a handle on. When disguised as the friar, he often adopts a position of silent, detached observation that mirrors our own. But we are never sure whether to take his glib, youthful charm as the genuine condition of a likeable but incompetent and selfish noble or as the mask of a master manipulator.

Putting in more memorable performances are Jim Hart, DRA '99, as Pompey, a mangy, bilious whorehouse servant, and Daniel Cooney, DRA '99, as Lucio, the sharp-tongued, leopard-skin-wearing friend of Claudio who coaches Isabella in her petitions to Angelo. Pompey resembles a smart mutt: he wears spiked leather, his eyes are red-rimmed, and he seems to think the most important things about humans can be discerned by intrusively nuzzling their groins. Cooney's Lucio knows how to handle himself, both in Vienna's broiling demimonde and in the Duke's court, but he doesn't quite seem to inhabit either.

Rucker makes a bold decision not to begin the play in the Duke's palace, as Shakespeare does. Instead, as a crunching, bass-driven dance beat blares over the P.A. system, a partition rises to reveal the orgiastic maelstrom of an S&M club. Characters dressed in black leather whip each other and rut, while a woman furiously jabs herself with a hypodermic needle before mounting a muscular man on the floor. It's confounding to learn a little later on that this man is Claudio and the woman is Juliet, his fiancee. Rucker inexplicably prevents us from taking Claudio and Juliet as innocent lovers wronged by Angelo's sadistic authority.

This scene makes no sense. It establishes S&M not only as the production's guiding aesthetic but also as the touchstone of what it would have us take as the play's fundamental insight into human desire. But at the start of the play, Angelo is not yet in power and the laws are not yet enforced. Why would sexual mores that eroticize fascistic power be prominent in a realm of laissez-faire rule?

If we extract this scene from the narrative chronology and take it as a metaphor (or best guess) about the vicious, libidinous underpinnings of human interaction, it remains unsatisfying. Rucker presupposes that, regardless of societal and institutional pressures, human experience comes down to fucking and hurting. The production's nihilism is crudely essentialist. For perhaps precisely this reason--and certainly because of the adept cast and crew--the production is also sensational, providing us with sour but irresistible eye candy. Be a nihilist: go on a "pay what you can" night.

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