John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi is by no means a barrel of laughs. Manipulation and mayhem, torture and murder are the substance of the thing. So having the audience laugh (heartily? nervously? both?) at the final slayings of four major characters came as something of a surprise – just as it did when I last saw the play several decades ago. Did they laugh at the Blackfriars Theatre in 1612-13, when it was first performed there? I think it’s entirely possible. Even in an era when life was cheap, it still must have seemed rather ridiculous.
The Duchess of Malfi is the opening production at the
newly-finished Sam Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe. It was always part
of architect Theo Crosby’s conception – an indoor playhouse based on the
earliest surviving design for a theatre in Britain.
Initially it was called the
Inigo Jones, that great English architect of the early seventeenth century
being thought to be its author. When this was felt to be unlikely, it was
described more loosely as the Jacobean Theatre. Then the academic advisors to
the Globe decided that it was probably designed well after the death of James I, more
correctly from the reign of Charles II. The consensus now seems to be that it
was created by Inigo Jones’s pupil and follower, John Webb.
Over the past twenty years it has stood there empty, used
primarily for rehearsal and educational projects. Now it’s fully kitted out, candlelit,
the audience hugger-mugger, a small space for intimate performance. Quite
unique.
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