Oct 185 min read

Review: The Duchess (of Malfi) (Trafalgar Theatre)

Review by Daz Gale

⭐️⭐️

2024 seems to have been dominated by stars of Doctor Who have taken to the London stage, with Matt Smith and David Tennant both hitting the West End and current Doctor Ncuti Gatwa about to star in The Importance Of Being Earnest. Amongst those Doctors though was one who made history for being the first female Doctor. That person is Jodie Whittaker, who returns to the stage for the first time in more than a decade to star in a new production of The Duchess (Of Malfi). Would her impressive acting ability be enough to ensure a good time or would this prove to be a right royal mess?

John Webster’s Jacobean revenge tragedy The Duchess of Malfi dates back to the 1600s with Zinnie Harris adapting it for a new contemporary production, moving the action to the late 1950s. The play focuses on the recently widowed Duchess who defies her family when she remarries beneath her class. Determined she needs to be punished for her actions, the brothers set out to do just that, though their actions may well come back to haunt them.

Should I start this review by saying theatre is subjective? I’ve said it a million times before but I feel like it needs to be said especially on this occasion. Two people can sit next to each other in a theatre – one can be completely enraptured and be unable to love a show any more than they already do while the other… may be having the opposite reaction. Sadly, I fall in the latter camp this time around in a production that I personally felt was too flawed to be able to enjoy.

Having never seen a production of The Duchess before, this was a story that was new to me – I deliberately went in without reading up on the show to get what I hoped would be the maximum impact of the story. It isn’t possible for me to say for certain how much I enjoyed the story and what would have been the original writing, though I saw how captivating it could be had it been realised differently. However, some bizarre choices and the overall execution (please forgive the pun) of the piece meant it never quite landed in the way it should have.

The biggest fault of The Duchess is in its failure to connect, feeling cold and meaning the stakes, while high, don’t come across that way, with everything either understated or exaggerated, never quite striking the right balance. The set has been designed with brutalism in mind, and brutal it is… but in a completely different way. Feeling completely at odds with the story, it has a deeply unpleasant aesthetic that never stimulates and leaves the stage feeling sparse and distant – not a great feeling in the relatively intimate Trafalgar Theatre, and at complete odds with how effectively People, Places & Things managed to connect in the same space earlier this year.

While the design elements left a lot to be desired for me personally, the biggest fault in the failure of this production for me is in the direction in itself. Baffling choices from the opening moments set the show on a downward spiral, doing a disservice to Webster’s original material. Poor pacing meant the first half is dominated with introducing characters with their names emblazoned on a stage feeling like a particularly dull episode of Black Mirror. It is in the lazy way characters walk on and off the stage after each moment and what they do with the time they are there which shows how undercooked the direction here has been, with cast members feeling like a deer in headlights at times as they deal with choices that just do not work in any sense.

The minimalistic approach, monotone deliveries and use of video in act two drew obvious comparisons to Jamie Lloyd’s style. However, it did feel more of a deliberate imitation in a style that didn’t work for this production in particular. Cast members walking over to microphones made the play feel very disjointed and felt like a deliberate attempt to be different with no thought of how effective this would be to the storytelling method. Every use of this felt frustrating and led me to expect the cast to burst into a song from RENT, which perhaps might have made the evening all the more interesting.

The direction here tries to do too much, never knowing exactly what it wants to do or why. Extremely confused, it comes across as clumsy and is reminiscent of throwing as many things to a (bare) wall as possible in the hope that something sticks. Sadly, nothing did. The use of music here was also jarring too, with cast members bursting into song sporadically. While it was nice to hear Jodie Whittaker’s singing voice, did it add to the story? Was it necessary? And what, if anything, was the point? When you find yourself asking those questions mid-play, something has gone seriously wrong.

The strongest element of The Duchess is in its wonderful cast – all of whom do what they can with the limiting choices they have been given but it isn’t enough to save this show from its overwhelming number of issues. Jodie Whittaker may be the titular Duchess, but we don’t see much of her for the first act. When we do, she proves herself to be an incredibly gifted actor, in a performance that demands to be watched. This made the show all the more frustrating as she deserved better direction to utilise her strengths.

With characters coming and going too often, it was tricky for anyone to leave a lasting impression or distance themselves from all the noise, but a few managed it. Though woefully underused, Joel Fry gave a heart-warming portrayal of Antonio with Elizabeth Ayodele a delight as Julia. Jude Owusu felt like the only character who had a real journey, resulting in a commanding turn as Bosala with Matti Houghton a standout in her brief appearances as Cariola. Rory Fleck Byrne gets perhaps the hardest performance as Ferdinand in an overstated larger-than-life performance that feels at odds with the rest of the show and though he is in a completely different show to everyone else. Though he does what he can with the cards he has been dealt, it did again heighten the difficulties this production features.

The exciting thing about theatre is in how different varying adaptations of classic plays can be. I am always exciting to see a new take on something, never knowing if it will work or be a castrophe. They are not always going to work, and this production of The Duchess is a perfect example of that. Something has been lost in this misguided adaptation with confused direction completely misunderstanding how to connect with its audience. At my performance I witnessed people laughing at moments that very clearly were not meant to be funny. While the show deals with some serious and disturbing themes, these fail to come across with all the gravitas they deserve, with its ambitious hopes to send a clear message completely lost in translation. This was a play I was excited about from its initial announcement but has sadly become one of the most disappointing shows I have seen this year. Though The Duchess boasts a fantastic cast, they are not enough to save it from its many flaws.