The Duchess of Malfi

ADC Theatre, 7.45 PM, February 25th-March 1st, £10/8.

If you think you have ever had a serious family row, you haven’t seen ‘The Duchess of Malfi’. This play squashes gender, sex, power and murder into almost every second of its run. Acting it intense; drama soars to extremes and the audience is transported to a sadistic, religious, mental and unrealistic renaissance Italy. Raucous and macabre tragedy, this tragedy is maddening in its rampant disregard for subtlety – hugely enjoyable for its showcase of drama at its most dramatic, and acting at its most exciting.

The slow singing start sweeps in a film noir mood that paints the rest of the play. Black-suited soldiers surround women clothed in deep crimson. The shifted setting of Fascist Italy in the 1930s works brilliantly – we’re less alienated from the characters by time, and more focused on their human failings and fatal flaws.

Roaring opera and jazz serve as an evocative backdrop; clips of film create a propaganda atmosphere.

The titular duchess (Charlotte Quinney) begins the play exuberant and playfully powerful – things only get worse for her after that. She makes Antonio (Henry Jenkinson) hugely wifely at the start – instructing him even in their proposal. Dominating but naive, gossiping and indignant, Quinney acts suitable mix of contradictions that condemns the duchess in a cold, calculating political world.

Relatively tame at the start, after an operatic ending to the first half the plot ups the ante. The acting and characterisation intensifies similarly. Paul Adeyeta is brilliant as the swaggering Bosola – at once full of quips and tormenting guilt. James Bloor as Ferdinand is inescapable – his force on stage is potent and fanatical at times. A projected close-up shows him as the perfect flat expressionless face of Fascism with Big-Brother-like power – preaching ‘pure blood, glorious fire’.  Mark Milligan is simpering, savage and inhuman in a satirical Jacobean portrayal of Italian cardinals – him and Bloor provide the perfect antidote to each other’s mode of villainy.

A production that can offer wit and tragedy clearly has some talent behind it. There was no shortage of humour (somewhat surprising in a play centring on incestuous jealousy) and the audience clearly appreciated it. This tale of a family argument gone wild is fierce at every turn. It is a great, but crazed watch – the duchess plummets to a terrifying fall, and that really is unbelievable in its vehement violence. If the end-of-term work panic seems crazy, this is a great play to make reality seem sane.