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Performance times are: Mon-Sat 19:30. Mar 28 at 19:00. Wed,Sat Mats 14:30. No Mat May 28. Extra Mat Thu Mar 29
Synopsis Eve Best returns to The Old Vic in March 2012, in John Webster's great Jacobean tragedy, The Duchess of Malfi, directed by Jamie Lloyd.
The Duchess of Malfi is a wealthy young widow. Jealous of her fortune, her two brothers, the Cardinal and her twin Ferdinand, decide she must not remarry. To this end they introduce a spy into her household, the ruthless Bosola. The court of Malfi is a treacherous place, with political, religious and personal allegiances in constant conflict. But the Duchess is blinded to its dangers by her love for her servant, Antonio. When their marriage is revealed her outraged brothers determine on a devastating course of action. Revenge breeds revenge, love turns to hate and a powerful tale of despair and madness inexorably unfolds.
Eve Best's most recent theatre credits include Beatrice in The Globe’s Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Jeremy Herrin. Best also took the title role in Hedda Gabler at the Almeida, for which she won the 2006 Olivier Award for Best Actress, she was later nominated for the same award in 2007 for her role of Josie in Eugene O’Neill’s A Moon for the Misbegotten at The Old Vic. On screen, Best is known for her portrayal of the Duchess of Windsor in the Oscar winning The King’s Speech.
Please note: Contains scenes of a sexual nature and violence.
Jamie Lloyd's revival of John Webster's classic Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi opened at the Old Vic last night (28 March 2012, previews from 17 March), featuring Olivier Award-winner and Nurse Jackie star Eve Best in the title role.
The famously bloody drama charts the calamitous consequences of a young widow's refusal to obey her brothers' command never to remarry. When the spy, Bosola, is planted in the Duchess' household, the trap is set which leads to exile, torture, madness and death.
“After all her tortures, trials and tribulations, John Webster’s spirited Jacobean heroine proudly proclaims, ‘I am Duchess of Malfi, still.’ … There is nothing still, or immobile, about Eve Best’s impetuous and full-hearted portrayal. In fact, she surges across the stage on that line, bursting at the seams of the play, and her own white shift. Most great duchesses - Judy Parfitt, Helen Mirren, Charlotte Emmerson … become drained, distracted, marmoreal. Best tops them … She’s not even driven ‘mad’ by the unleashed lunatics … This is a tremendous Italianate revival by Jamie Lloyd of one of the greatest plays in the language, a display of glittering jewels on the dung heap of a perverted court, where Mark Bonnar’s full-on bitter Bosola (‘the only court gall’) is hired to expose the private life of their own widowed sister by a corrupt cardinal and an obsessive wolf man.”
“Jamie Lloyd has come up with that comparative rarity these days: a classical revival that delights in the original's language and period setting. And Eve Best gives a compelling performance that measures up to such past duchesses as Helen Mirren and Harriet Walter ... On the one hand, there is the nihilist view of life as ‘a general mist of error’, as expressed by Bosola and embodied by the corrupt Calabrian princes, Ferdinand and his brother, a cardinal … the production makes sexually explicit the incestuous passion of Ferdinand for his sister, and it is unafraid to show the reality of death: not since Hitchcock's Torn Curtain have I seen a strangling as protracted and plausible as the duchess's … Best, however, who is the star. From her first entrance, bathed in light, she offers a symbolic contrast to the rank gloom of court life. There is also growth in her performance.”
“Best ... is very much the star of this rather stately production of John Webster’s 17th-century play. As the duchess of the title, she combines serenity with great power and passion. It’s a warm performance, lucid and moving ... director Jamie Lloyd, in getting his cast to pay so much attention to the density of Webster’s language, loses a sense of intrigue and malignant horror ... The first time we see the duchess, she is wreathed in smoke as if in an Eighties pop video. Fortunately she turns out to be all flesh and blood: a widow, she is smitten with her steward Antonio yet forbidden by her brothers from pursuing the relationship ... In some of the smaller roles there are notes of hamminess. And in the larger role of the duchess's brother Ferdinand, the skilful Harry Lloyd feels miscast ... In many ways this is a traditional production, honouring its period setting. But its moments of gravity are signaled a little clumsily, and when it tries to be sexy it doesn’t satisfy.”
[W@S_IMG]#http://whatsonstage.com/images/DuchessofMalfi2012_360.jpg#360#240#Eve Best & Harry Lloyd in The Duchess of Malfi. Photo credit: Johan Persson[/W@S_IMG] Charles Spencer Daily Telegraph ★★★★
“The Duchess of Malfi is a superbly effective piece of theatre, mixing jolting shocks and pitch-black comedy with wonderful lines of ominous verse … the Duchess, who after marrying her steward is cruelly and ingeniously persecuted by her snobbish brothers and their malcontent henchman Bosola ... The great Eve Best seizes all her chances here, giving a thrilling, sexy and often deeply moving performance in Jamie Lloyd’s gripping, atmospheric production ... Best’s great achievement is that she brings a warm, glowing humanity to a play that could easily seem just one damnable thing after another … As she falls for, and seduces, her servant Antonio (Tom Bateman), she combines unbuttoned sensuality with mischievous humour … The play’s biggest structural failing is that the Duchess dies before the end of the fourth act, and the remainder of the play is little more than an over-the-top bloodbath … Harry Lloyd is in fabulously deranged form as the Duchess’ jealous twin brother Ferdinand, who clearly harbours incestuous desires.”
Libby Purves The Times ★★★★
“John Webster, with Gothic glee, created a Cardinal steeped in lust and espionage, his brother the Duke a pallid psychopath incestuously preoccupied with his widowed sister ... This is English Euro-horror, the root which led later to Frankenstein: designer Soutra Gilmour picks it up with relish ... it is a world of echoes and executioners and hirelings who, like Bosola, greet a thrown purse of gold with a businesslike ‘Whose throat must I cut?’… The wonder of the play is that against the filthy darkness shines theatre’s most wholesome, heroic, high-spirited heroine. Eve Best’s Duchess is a perfection of laughing, blooming, sane maturity from her arrival scattering light to her defiant grief and dry humour facing death.”
After all her tortures, trials and tribulations, John Webster’s spirited Jacobean heroine proudly proclaims, “I am Duchess of Malfi, still.”
But there is nothing still, or immobile, about Eve Best’s impetuous and full-hearted portrayal. In fact, she surges across the stage on that line, bursting at the seams of the play, and her own white shift.
Most great duchesses - Judy Parfitt, Helen Mirren, Charlotte Emmerson at Northampton recently - become drained, distracted, marmoreal. Best tops them, throbs with passion.
She’s not even driven “mad” by the unleashed lunatics (here a spooky sound effect, not the full processional Monty, alas) and she kicks against the pricks to the end, unvanquished in death, a grim ghost in silhouette against the ancient ruins and Gothic arches of Soutra Gilmour’s vaulted baroque setting.
This is a tremendous Italianate revival by Jamie Lloyd of one of the greatest plays in the language, a display of glittering jewels on the dung heap of a perverted court, where Mark Bonnar’s full-on bitter Bosola (“the only court gall”) is hired to expose the private life of their own widowed sister by a corrupt cardinal and an obsessive wolf man.
These two – Finbar Lynch in a scarlet cassock and a huge black leather sling (a kinkily appropriate costume accessory necessitated by a broken arm) and an icily sadistic Harry Lloyd – create an axis of evil unimaginable even in these dog days of phone hacking and tweeted calumnies. The story is horrific because you know it happened.
[W@S_IMG]#http://whatsonstage.com/images/DuchessofMalfi_JohanPersson_360.jpg#360#240#The cast of The Duchess of Malfi Photo credit: Johan Persson[/W@S_IMG] This sense of true-life chronicle, as well as an overpowering stench, is stronger than anything in Shakespeare, or even Whitehall.
And Lloyd doesn’t once let us off lightly. The fifth act is often rushed through after the grisly garrotting and night shrieks (“Some other strangle the children” is the most casually disturbing of commands), but not here. The atrocities continue in betrayals, stabbings, and too-late second thoughts.
The technical back-up from James Farncombe’s brilliant lighting and the sound and music of Ben and Max Ringham creates an overheated chamber of horrors where murderers skulk in corners and church ceremony – swinging thuribles of incense, hooded priests and flickering candles – serves only the most sinister of purposes.
The wax tableau is cunningly done, the severed hand a plausible prop in the darkness, and the duchess’s great speech of the salmon and the dog-fish (“Men oft are valued high, when th’are most wretch’d”) a shaft of illuminating reason.
Lloyd’s company has the ensemble conviction of the RSC at its long distant best, with sterling support from Tom Bateman’s handsome Antonio, the duchess’s secret lover from the forbidden lower ranks, a sort of Peter Townsend to an earlier Princess Margaret; and Iris Roberts as a conniving Julia, the cardinal’s carnal mistress who is despatched (“I go I know not whither”) by sucking greedily on a poisoned missal, a bad end on a good book.
Eve Best was excellent and the lighting was particularly evocative but Tom Bateman was badly cast as the secret husband his weak acting was in strong contrast to the other main player. - Lynn
20 May 12
Wonderful design and acting, both chilling and beautiful. This is a stunning production. - JWW
22 Apr 12
This is a very good, frequently gripping production, but I don't feel that Eve Best was matched in the acting stakes by Mark Bonnar's Bosola, who is a little too one-note angry for my liking. Best's title character is not destined to stick around 'til the end, and it is really Bosola who must hold things together, and for me, he really didn't. On the other hand, I thought Harry Lloyd made hay out of The Duchess' incestuous brother, his arrogant fey craziness exciting proceedings whenever he was on stage. Best herself is luminous, in her initial sexual rebellion, and later in her acceptance of her terrible fate. The production looks wonderful, like a holy gilded golden cage of arches and bridges and staircases. And the creepy religiosity and hypocrisy of all the male authority figures creates a suitably malevolent atmosphere. - steveatplays
07 Apr 12
Far better production done recently at the now lost Greenwich Playhouse. Alice De Sousa was a much better duchess and the production there far more ingenious and bold. - David Reid
01 Apr 12
I agree broadly with Tel, but give it 3 stars as Eve Best turns in a great performance. Left me pretty cold, and l thought the garotting scene was almost risible: the Duchess would have died about 5 times over! - Lizzo
30 Mar 12
I totally agree with the five stars. I have seen two previous productions of the play, the one with Eleanor Bron and Ian McKellan a bit too stately; and the one with the great Harriet Walter a bit too small in the Barbican Pit, with weak actors in the male roles. But this towering production succeeds on all counts, making this dense and difficult play deeply accessible and moving: a production of great clarity. - Harry
29 Mar 12
I'm sorry but o cannot agree with five stars. Granted eve best was amazing but most of the supporting cast were extremely poor. This is a completely over effect production, the setting reminded me of hogwarts and a lot of the acting resembled some ridiculous sixties ott period drama. Harry Lloyd is particularly weak as Ferdinand, the troubled incestuous brother. He plays it all at one level and appears as a camp villain in a bad melodrama completely devoid of Nuance. He is not helped by a ridiculous costume that makes him resemble a member of a bad eighties band. Not worth the ticket price, over egged and dull. - tel
The Old Vic is one of the oldest theatres in London and famous throughout the English speaking world. Long known as 'the actors theatre', many of the greatest performers of the last century have played on its stage. In September 2004, The Old Vic Theatre Company was launched, under the artistic leadership of Kevin Spacey, to present a wide range of work, from the classic to the new, to appeal to both traditional theatre-goers and new audiences.
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