Measure for Measure program

Photo: Johan Persson

MEASURE FOR MEASURE CHEEK BY JOWL WITH PUSHKIN THEATRE MOSCOW UK/RUSSIA I AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE DIRECTED BY DECLAN DONNELLAN & DESIGNED BY NICK ORMEROD

MEASURE FOR MEASURE CHEEK BY JOWL WITH PUSHKIN THEATRE MOSCOW UK/RUSSIA I AUSTRALIAN EXCLUSIVE ROSLYN PACKER THEATRE WALSH BAY 7–11 JANUARY 110 MINS

CAST Alexander Arsentyev Escalus

Director

Declan Donnellan Designer

Nick Ormerod Assistant Director

Kirill Sbitnev Lighting Designer

Sergey Skornetskiy Composer

Pavel Akimkin Choreographer

Iurii Rumiantcev

Irina Kashuba

Angelo

Artistic Director of the Pushkin Theatre Moscow

Andrei Kuzichev Lucio

Evgeny Pisarev Producer (Russia)

Alexander Feklistov

Anya Kolesnikova

Claudio

Executive Director, Cheek by Jowl

Kiryl Dytsevich

Eleanor Lang

Provost

Alexander Matrosov Executioner

CREW

Technical Director

Ivan Litvinenko

Alexander Solomin

Elbow

Lights

Nikolay Kislichenko Barnardine

Alexey Eremin Sound

DIRECTOR’S NOTE Measure for Measure has a resonance wherever we play it and it always strikes me as a very modern play. It’s about many different things, including how governments try to control us and how one of the ways we are controlled (by not only governments, but by churches and other institutions that seek to control us, like the family) may be through shame.

It is also a warning against the cult of the ‘‘pure and good’’.

What scares me about Angelo is not that he is a hypocrite and a corrupt politician pretending to be good. That is too comforting, the cliché that lies. No, the problem with Angelo is that he genuinely believes that he is “pure and good’’.

The Duke, on the other hand, believes he has a problem because he does not feel “pure”. He is doubting and unstable, and he craves the apparent calm of rightness and certainty. So he becomes infatuated with Angelo who makes it all seem so easy. But, as the Duke painfully discovers, purity and certainty make for a hellish cocktail.

No priest or politician dare suggest that purity may of itself be corrupt, but an artist (such as Shakespeare) can do it through the permission of illusion.

Measure for Measure is a political play about corruption in general, but also, more importantly, about the human capacity to be corrupt. It careers through that Shakespearean landscape where political, spiritual and psychological dangers criss-cross in a thrilling matrix. But Shakespeare never preaches to us.

He never tells us how to live – there were plenty of moralising priests, politicians and pamphleteers in his time who did that.

Alexey Rakhmanov

Liubov Fedkovich

Isabella

Stage Manager

Anna Khalilulina

Maria Krymova

Mariana / Mistress Overdone

Makeup

Elmira Mirel

Elizaveta Pravosudova

Shakespeare is powerful because he is instinctively invisible.

He is obsessed with our dread of loss and with our astonishing capacity for denial. He knows that much of what we say exists to hide the truth from ourselves. He knows that wisdom comes from the capacity to hold two contradictory thoughts together at the same time without splitting off one of these two contradictions and locating it elsewhere. Yes, purity is in itself corrupt because we can never find a human pure without finding someone else filthy.

Juliet / Francisca

Wardrobe

Anastasia Lebedeva

Elena Semenova

Even God needs the devil.

Igor Teplov Pompey / Friar Peter

Evgenia Bilinkis Props

Produced by Cheek by Jowl and the Pushkin Theatre, Moscow in a co-production with the Barbican, London; Les Gémeaux/ Sceaux/Scène Nationale; Centro Dramático Nacional, Madrid (INAEM).

Sydney Festival wishes to thanks Vic and Katie French for helping to make this production possible.

But none of this ever lets us off the hook of trying to make the best possible choice at every moment. Just because good judgement is hard to achieve does not mean we can forget it.

And in these dangerous days we need good judgement more than ever.

Declan Donnellan

Photo: Johan Persson

Duke

CREATIVE TEAM

DECLAN DONNELLAN DIRECTOR Declan Donnellan is joint Artistic Director of Cheek by Jowl.

As Associate Director at the National Theatre his productions include: Fuenteovejuna; Sweeney Todd; The Mandate; and both parts of Angels in America.

Other productions include: Le Cid (Avignon Festival); The Winter’s Tale (Maly Theatre of St. Petersburg); and Shakespeare in Love (West End). He also produced the opera Falstaff (Salzburg Festival), the ballet Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet (Bolshoi) and and co-directed the film Bel Ami with Nick Ormerod.

In 2009, he shared the Charlemagne Prize with Craig Ventner and Archbishop Tutu. His book, The Actor and the Target, was first published in Russian in 2000 and has subsequently appeared in 15 languages. In 2016, he was awarded the Golden Lion of Venice for Lifetime Achievement.

NICK ORMEROD DESIGNER Nick Ormerod is joint Artistic Director of Cheek by Jowl. For the National Theatre his productions include: Fuenteovejuna; Peer Gynt; Sweeney Todd; The Mandate; and both parts of Angels in America. For the Royal Shakespeare Company: The School for Scandal; King Lear (RSC Academy); and Great Expectations, which he also co-adapted.

Other works include: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahogonny (English National Opera); Martin Guerre (Prince Edward Theatre); Hayfever (Savoy Theatre); Antigone (The Old Vic); Falstaff (Salzburg Festival); and Shakespeare in Love (West End). He also co-directed the film Bel Ami with Declan Donnellan.

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