Playwright: John Webster. At: Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway. Tickets: 866-811-4111; www.strawdog.org; $28. Runs through: May 26
An ambitious concept, however flawed, is still worthy of scrutiny, if only for its lofty intentions. Before Arthur Miller introduced the "tragedy of the common man," an inflexible tenet of the genre was its focus on ruling-class citizens surrendering to base instincts leading them to behave badly. The lesson thus conveyed to audiences of similar social status was that privilege offers no protection from the consequences of irresponsible judgmentone of them being the discovery by their subordinates that those above them were prey to the same temptations as all human beings.
John Webster's 16th-century hankie-twister is perfectly geared to this disparate market: Our title noblewoman is a young widow who persuades the household steward to marry her in secret and father her children. This reckless act does not please her brothers, each of whom has his own dishonorable reasons for ensuring their sister's celibacy. Duke Ferdinand even goes so far as to hire a mercenary, first as a spy, then as an assassin, to thwart the Duchess' stubborn disobedience. In the meantime, her other siblinga cardinal in the Roman churchfinds his worldly lifestyle threatened by the public scandal arising from his sister's wanton conduct.
It's not uncommon for a theater company's newly installed artistic director to pull out the stops for his first in-house production, but Brandon Bruce's attempt to impose the conventions of classical tragedy on its Jacobean descendant neglects to consider the crucial factor of violenceand its mirror-opposite, lustoccurring always offstage in the former. Instead, Bruce goes Webster one better in his display of lurid spectacle: Ferdinand, for example, all but drools with incestuous desire, and later, after he succumbs to lycanthropic madness, he roams the night amid ruined chapels, snarling and gnawing at bones.
This extravagant physicality isn't shocking to modern theatergoers acclimated to graphic imageryespecially since the principal actors keep a firm grip on their text, never allowing their passions to spill over into excessbut Bruce also incorporates such Attic motifs as live musicians playing period instruments and a speaking chorus garbed as androgynous quasi-Peter Brook grotesques.
Although these ghostly attendants facilitate swift introduction of furniture and auxiliary personnel, their keening vocalizations and korybanting group-movement escalate the emotional intensity in Strawdog Theatre's intimate space to Dionysiac proportions beyond the comfort level of opening-night playgoers, who sought respite in nervous gigglesnot the response you want when striving for Aristotelian catharsis.