Director Joe Hill-Gibbins, with an abridged text and much use of video and rock music, gives Shakespeare’s mordant satire on the tyranny of the flesh, a radical rehaul, which will amuse and irritate in equal (er) measure. It opens with a startling image of inflatable sex dolls piled high, a metaphor for the decadence to which society has sunk.
The Duke of Vienna (Zubin Varla, very weird) passes the buck to his deputy, Angelo (Paul Ready, very staid), to enforce the law. The first thing Angelo does is close all the brothels and sentence to death single men who get women pregnant. A young novice about to take her vows (Romola Garai, very emphatic) comes to plead for her sentenced brother’s life. She is outraged when Angelo says he will reverse the sentence if she will have sex with him.
The play is a Christian parable on mercy and forgiveness and its religiosity is emphasised at The Young Vic by the visual references to medieval art. No actor, as far as I know, has been able to make sense of the Duke and his behaviour when he is in disguise as a friar and spying on everybody; at least not at a realistic level. At a symbolic level, the Duke represents Justice and Church and he acts like an Old Testament God.