The Duchess of Malfi at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse – Reviews Round-up

"Revenge tragedy goes hard on the humour"

"Toxic masculinity rears its head in Rachel Bagshaw’s Globe debut which proves less interested in horror effects than the characters’ emotional journeys"

"Ten years after this theatre first opened its doors with Dominic Dromgoole’s production, director Rachel Bagshaw’s Globe debut proves less interested in atmospheric horror effects than the emotional journeys of its protagonists."

"Francesca Mills demonstrates her range in the title role, from her comic wooing of Antonio (a likable Olivier Huband) and the tenderness of their relationship to her furious grief at his murder."

"While Bagshaw coaxes intriguing performances from her cast, it’s less clear what meaning she is teasing from the play."

"This Malfi also goes hard on the humour and, while Martin McDonagh’s work is proof that a stage full of corpses can be funny and terrible, here the comic treatment too often intrudes on pathos – not least in the final scene, when you sense that you’re supposed to leave with a smile, happy that all the horrible men are dead."

"A bracing revival that finds humour in the bloody chaos"

"An atmospheric production that brings out Jacobean playwright John Webster’s savage poetry and bleak world vision"

"[Francesca Mills'] a piercing, strong-willed Duchess in a bracing revival by Rachel Bagshaw that brings out Webster’s savage poetry and bleak world vision."

"It marks 10 years of the indoor, candlelit Sam Wanamaker playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe, and makes you wish this organisation staged more works by Shakespeare’s contemporaries and successors, which was part of its original mission."

"This play feels transgressive and oddly modern. The giddily illicit passion between the Duchess and Olivier Huband’s soft-spoken Antonio is irresistible. Her brothers, a cardinal and a duke, react with a rage that borders on incestuous obsession."

"Bagshaw’s atmospheric production also brings out the humour amid the bloody chaos of Webster’s world. This is a cracking piece of work."

"A phenomenal title turn from Francesca Mills powers this accessible, PG-rated take on Webster’s dark tragedy"

"Francesca Mills is luminous in the title role of this sadistic thriller by Shakespeare’s young contemporary, John Webster. It’s thrilling to see this exceptional actress in something more challenging than comic and minor bits; good also that director Rachel Bagshaw does not try to weave Mills’s dwarfism into the production but lets her talent shine."

"Intimate, lit only by candles or, for one nightmarish central scene, plunged into darkness – ‘Malfi’ was designed for a theatre exactly like the Sam Wanamaker"

"The excellent Arthur Hughs brings a sinuous self-loathing style to Bosola, the hitman hired to kill the Duchess. But I missed something in her relationship with the two men who pay his wages, her brothers (played by Jamie Ballard and Oliver Johnstone). We're building up to some sadistic stuff in the second half, and it needs nastier, more compulsive motivation."

"Thrilling, funny and moving"

"Rachel Bagshaw makes her directorial debut at Shakespeare’s Globe with an urgent, thrilling rendition of John Webster’s great Jacobean revenge tragedy. Her staging within the intimate confines of the Globe’s Sam Wanamaker Playhouse (now in its tenth anniversary season) is unexpectedly funny, moving and, at least at one point, plunged into literal as well as existential darkness."

"... Bagshaw, her creative team and a top-notch cast do full justice to the lip-smacking cruelty of the text and its rich, often bitter and metaphor-laden poetry."

"Bagshaw’s tight-knit yet emotionally flamboyant production is anchored by the superb Francesca Mills. Her many-layered Duchess is fierce, sweet, authoritative yet sensitive, noble and heartbreaking."

"Bolstered by the composer Anna Clock’s perceptive, jazz-inflected live score, Bagshaw and the actors ensure that their various paths to destruction are always sharply involving."

"Detailed, highly visual staging"

"Francesca Mills is compelling in this classic story of callous cruelty and bloody revenge"

"This lucid version from director Rachel Bagshaw smooths over the play’s jagged melodramatic edges, revealing a gripping human drama full of warmth, sensual detail and a surprising depth of humour. Bagshaw’s detailed, highly visual staging conveys heaps of unspoken subtext, with characters silently scheming or steeling themselves on the sidelines before launching into dangerous, high-stakes conversations."

"Francesca Mills is riveting and heartbreaking as the Duchess. Capable of both regal dignity and bursts of winningly warm charisma, she is a commanding presence, controlling her courtiers with a delicate touch."

"The production benefits from fully integrated captioning. Lively animated text, designed by Sarah Readman, scrawls and dances over the walls, creating complex patterns that highlight the shifting allegiances."

"A dazzling lead performance, but this Jacobean torture-fest fails to chill"

"Francesca Mills radiates authority as the titular star, but this return to Webster’s play fails to exploit either the drama or the venue"

"... it’s a play so dripping in misogyny it feels tailor made for our present day hyper-vigilance around matters of slut-shaming, sexual coercion and murderous gender power abuses. I wish I could have felt the shock of this anew in Bagshaw’s revival, which stars, triumphantly, Francesca Mills as the formidable Duchess"

"Yet Bagshaw’s revival, which is flavoured with the brightly coloured antic grotesquerie of a masqued Venetian ball, and accompanied in places by jauntily dissonant jazz, struggles to match its larky tone with a necessary growing sense of horror."

"All the same, the interesting thing about Mills’s performance is the way it seems to rob her male tormentors of their power."