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Measure for Measure

 
Rebecca Vines Review by Rebecca Vines 4 Published: 1 Oct 2025 Royal Shakespeare Company Show Dates: 1 Oct 2025-25 Oct 2025

Erica Burns' new production of Measure for Measure for the RSC gives Shakespeare’s problem play a clear and wholly unproblematic treatment. Laid bare is the feeble, dangerous reality of ‘godly’ men who all too happily commit the very acts their purported virtues refute — and which, moreover, they deny to the mere mortals they preside over.

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure uncovers the hypocrisy of the powerful, from puritanical leaders to modern scandals

Zakk Hein’s opening video montage of abstemious luminaries such as Epstein, Trump, Weinstein, and Andrew Windsor ignites the burning anger at the heart of the piece, receiving a ripple of cathartic applause from the audience for its trouble. Burns layers this further by suggesting that Duke Vincentio’s speedy departure from Vienna at the outset of the piece is, in fact, a ruse to detract from some dodgy photographs seemingly about to hit the press.

His replacement is Angelo: a goodly man whose own monastic demeanour informs the puritanical tyranny that will underpin his leadership. Bad news for young shagger Claudio, promptly arraigned and sentenced to death for impregnating his girlfriend. And even worse for Claudio’s virtuous sister, Isabella, whose pleas for her brother’s life result in a proposition from this outwardly sainted deputy.

As Angelo, Tom Mothersdale assumes a snivelling, weaselly demeanour somewhat at odds with his grand position. This odious little twerp would be hard pressed to get elected to the Village Hall tombola committee — and yet here he is, dangling the keys to the castle. So far, so familiar to anyone invested in British politics across the last few years. Dunning–Kruger would have a field day.

Isis Hainsworth plays the unhappy Isabella with a nervous energy and outrage that chimes most effectively within the contemporary framework. However, in choosing to downplay the faith that informs her very essence of being, the extremity of Isabella’s plight is also reduced, as is the true horror of Angelo’s controlling, perverted lust. This is one of the few missteps in an otherwise stunning commentary on the sanctimonious babblings of those who weaponise religiosity to further their political ambitions, and it minimises an opportunity to juxtapose the quietude of real belief against its flashier, emptier cousin.

Burns has played fast and loose with the original text, but without the risible trend for deploying modern slang and expletives that has so insidiously worked its way into the canon. Generations of GCSE students are now primed to believe Will was liberally sprinkling his parchments with a hefty dose of ‘bollocks’ and ‘okays’. And while this particular interpretation may not please the textual purists, there is no denying that liberating lines and concepts from other Shakespearean texts and repurposing them is nothing if not... well... Shakespearean. Burns ably demonstrates that Shakespeare himself is always enough, and her adaptation certainly offers enough toe-holds for an audience to climb the tree of understanding both her own vision and sufficient of the original.

Frankie Bradshaw’s bleak, greeny-grey set of straight lines and steel panels underpins the rigidity of supposed virtue extolled by the state: there is right and there is wrong. There are strict parameters. There are punishments measured to fit the crime. And yet, the very dynamism of the set — and its ability to shape-shift — points to the fluctuating morality of those who sit at the heart of government.

And no one embodies this posturing more than Vincentio himself. Adam James is quite magnificent as the deus ex machina of the piece: in this iteration, elevated to a gratifyingly more central figure than in the more traditional takes. His early swaggering pomposity lends a particularly seedy edge to his later vicar cosplay: performative Christianity writ large as ineffectual and hollow.

The nightmare realisation that this strutting, self-satisfied charlatan is indeed where the buck stops is not a new one, but its magnification is something this text has been crying out for for centuries. The relationship between Vincentio’s assumed role of simpering, voyeuristic priest and those of real faith is something that could have borne closer inspection had Isabella’s sisterhood been given its rightful place in the plot.

Oli Higginson as the unfortunate Claudio and Douggie McMeekin as the shambling Lucio provide standout support. There are also strong performances from Natasha Jayetileke as a Provost bemused by the foolishness of those she serves and Valentine Hanson as a (one presumes genuine) man of God relegated to the sidelines as others steal his religious thunder. But this is fundamentally James' show: sharp of suit and slick of soundbite, Vincentio has perfected how to smile and smile and be a villain, as exemplified by the repulsive sham he forces Isabella through in order to unmask the patsy Angelo and take any heat away from himself.

Shakespeare’s prescience in imagining a sex scandal that focuses on the hypocrisy of the elite and the silence of the abused needs shamefully little invention to make it relevant to a contemporary audience. “Who will believe thee, Isabella?” slimes the prenzie Angelo upon having exhorted a novice nun to yield her virginity to him, immediately conjuring the power imbalance that can constrict victims from reporting their abusers for many years. It weighs heavily. “Who would believe me?” echoes Isabella miserably, uttering not only her own cri de cœur, but a survivor’s anthem for the ages.

Amir Nisi

Rebecca Vines

Rebecca is an acclaimed practitioner and lecturer with a renowned global practice; and is the current Drama Chairman for the board of the British and International Federation of Festivals. Rebecca began her writing career as a diarist at The Guardian newspaper, and has been reviewing theatre since 2000. Rebecca trained as a performer with the Actors Company, and has written, directed and produced critically acclaimed and sell-out shows at the Edinburgh Fringe since 2003.

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When her brother falls foul of the state’s rigid morality laws, Isabella is sent to plead for his life in Shakespeare's razor-sharp thriller of hypocrisy and corruption.
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