Anna Burnside reviews a ‘taught’ production of the classic bloody Jacobean tragedy.
The opening scene of Jennifer Dick’s take on The Duchess of Malfi, performed in the sultry heat of the Kibble Palace, looks like a goth wedding. Which is appropriate for a play which begins with sex and death then goes deeper and darker still.
To her brothers’ dismay the young duchess, recently widowed, falls in love with her steward. Suspecting she is up to no good, they make her master of the horse their spy and watch her marry and have three children through their reports.
In this taught production, Dick ramps up the patriarchal horror story by making the spy a woman, snappily played by Claire Macallister. Her late change of heart, when she realises the depths of the brothers’ depravity, is at the moral heart of this disturbingly bloody piece.
Rebecca Robin is a delightful duchess, even when cranky and heavily pregnant. The scene where she and her steward, played by Manuasa Tagica, engage in courtly flirting is a tonic in the age of Tinder.
The brothers are vile in different ways. Stephen Arden, the cardinal, is frosty and calculating with hints of unpriestly appetites. Ferdinand, the Duchess’s twin, is Adam Donaldson unleashed.
Jacobean audiences did not expect redemption at the end of the show. They wanted blood and John Webster delivered. As does Dick.
The Duchess of Malfi is part of this year’s Bard in the Botanics season at Glasgow Botanic Gardens and performs until 01 August 2026. For further details, go to the company’s website.
Photo by Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.
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