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Date published: 2/7/2002
THE FREE LANCE-STAR WASHINGTON--Director Michael Kahn has been tinkering with "The Duchess of Malfi," and the results aren't pretty. Not that a straightforward version of John Webster's Jacobean tragedy would ever be pretty, exactly, but Kahn's interpretation makes a grim drama downright ugly. Webster was a late contemporary of William Shakespeare, and "Duchess," his best-known drama, was first performed in 1613. It follows the popular formula for Jacobean plays--injustice, revenge and piles of bodies at the final curtain. The plot is typically complicated and has hay-wagon-size holes. The duchess of the title, a widow, is forbidden by her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, to marry again. She, however, has fallen in love with her steward, Antonio, and marries him secretly. They have three children together before the brothers figure out what's going on, and start making trouble. The Duchess manages to send Antonio and their oldest son away to safety before she and her other two children are killed at her brothers' behest. Antonio comes back and gets killed himself. The servant who worked for Ferdinand against the Duchess has a change of heart and turns his sword upon the two brothers. They all kill one another in a welter of gore. In the end, the Duchess' surviving son by Antonio is proclaimed the heir of her estates. All of this is fairly dismal as it stands. Unfortunately, Kahn has added touches that only ratchet up the unpleasantness. Webster gave Ferdinand a speech in which he says his rage over the Duchess' marriage is because he had hoped to gain financially while she remained a widow. There are, to be sure, fleeting hints that Ferdinand's love for his twin sister might have an unwholesome flavor, but it's all very ambiguous. Kahn has opted to make that interpretation explicit. He cut Ferdinand's avaricious speech, and has him caressing his sister wildly during the confrontation between the two. As a crowning touch, Kahn has Kelly McGillis, who plays the Duchess, bare her breasts as she defies her brother to tell her why her youth and beauty should be shut up like a holy relic. None of this is edifying. Kahn also undermines Webster in the scenes immediately preceding the Duchess' murder.
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