Measure For Measure @ Zoo Southside

Shakespeare at the Fringe is inevitable, a key part of the festival's make up. It is also tricky. Everything has to be edited and cut down, often into only an hour with a small performance space and limited set or backdrop. The problem with Theatre Oikos' production is that the way they have tried to adapt and pull together a new angle on Shakespeare's 'problem play' just hasn't worked.

The Duke is set up as the leader of a gang of likely characters and the play transported into that genre of the gangster underworld; however it still holds many of the original features and not everything gels or fits into this new setting. This is particularly seen in the dialogue, which is not really modernised, though it is obviously and necessarily edited. I was originally pleased by this, as some of the Shakespearean delivery is excellent, but then suddenly the added modern lines came in: swearing and slang that was clearly used for laughs and jarred with the rest of the delivery.

The acting, too, was mixed.The lead cast members were all excellent in the circumstances. Particularly, the Duke, Isabella, Angelo and a particularly humorous portrayal of Pompey that smacked of the Shakespearian light relief character he was intended to be. The background characters however were less well portrayed. There was some stumbling on the syntax and delivery of the iambic pentameter that stood out next to the other cast members and some two-dimensional performances that didn't provide the depth that Angelo, Isabella and The Duke managed to capture in spite of the production's difficulties.

With all that said, they did do one thing well and that was the play's very ending. The final lines - or lack of final answer- in Measure For Measure is a problem for most readers, scholars, and something each production must tackle. Theatre Oikos makes a vey clear statement as to how the ending goes and just why it is a problem.