In William Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” the Duke of Vienna, Vincentio, sets up a Viennese test for his protégé, Angelo. He exiles himself to an Austrian monastery and secretly stands watch as Angelo morphs before our eyes into a tyrant, even demanding sex from a young nun, Isabel, so that she might save the life of her imprisoned brother, Claudio.
In director Henry Godinez’ new production of this so-called problem play at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Vincentio runs Havana. He exiles himself to a Floridian monastery (Tampa of all places) and then stands watch as Angelo turns into a Castro-like dictator, fatigues and all, quickly destroying the sensual, freewheeling 1950s Havana playground of Cuban artistes, Hemingway, Sinatra, the Hotel Nacional, Tropicana Club and La Floridita.
Godinez, best known for his Goodman Theatre productions, is of Cuban heritage himself; he arrived here on one of the Peter Pan flights in the 1960s and the history and fate of the island has been central to much of his work in Chicago theater over the years. This show is the work of a mature director; it feels much like a personal capstone.
The show begins in a Havana nightery of vaguely 1950s vintage; we watch a freewheeling vibe of music, dance and diverse personages, presided over by Mistress Overdone (Ana Santos) and Pompey (Elizabeth Ledo); the moment functions as both a lively preshow and the setting for the first scene of a “Measure” with a running time of only 1 hour and 45 minutes. At a rough guess, I’d say Godinez cut around a third of the original play, but assuming you’re no textual purist, you are unlikely to miss what’s gone.
Exit the Duke (Kevin Gudahl) to Tampa. And then Angelo (Adam Poss) wrecks havoc on this bohemian idyll, a situation that becomes especially intolerable for Isabel (Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel), who is forced to confront what is being asked from her in order to save her politically imprisoned brother (played by Andrés Enriquez). In the end, of course, the closely watching Duke finds a solution involving Mariana (Alejandra Escalante), allowing him to trap Angelo in his own actions.
“Measure for Measure,” last seen in a major Chicago production at the Goodman Theatre in 2013 in a very different take from director Robert Falls, is a very difficult play to stage, not least because of how hard it is now for the theater to deal with how Elizabethan dramatists routinely mixed comedy and romance into dramatic plots involving narratives of sexual and physical abuse. Most modern-day productions struggle with a consistent tone, given the lack of one in the original text, and this one is not an exception, judicious cutting notwithstanding.
But the production, which is highly entertaining, also achieves some very striking and unusual things.
In the first instance, the excellent Gonzalez-Cadel is wholly convincing as a nun, which is a rare achievement with a role often played as a standard ingénue. Not here. Isabel feels so wracked by what is being asked of her that it solves one of the play’s typical problems, which is that a loving sister would do that and more for the life of her brother.
There’s also the matter of how the Duke, seemingly the play’s benevolent deity throughout, suddenly asks Isabel for her hand in marriage, a further violation coming right before the final lines of the play. Most directors cut that or laugh it off or force Isabel to do a sudden 180-degree turn and reject her vows for a much older man.
But Gonzalez uses it as a fuel for a brilliant closing montage, using projections by Rasean Davonté Johnson, that makes the point, in essence, that the Duke, presumably standing in for the affluent ruling Cubans who left for Little Havana, were no better than the Castro crew. With Gonzalez-Cadel wordlessly showing us her character’s thought process, Isabel joins with the former prisoner Barnardine (Debo Balogun) to fight for a different kind of revolution.
In terms of actual Cuban politics, of course, all of this is dodging the trickier political specifics, especially what the Cuban experience implies for the far left. And to say that Havana — in reality, full of money, power and conflict — is here idealized as a gently liberal nirvana puts it mildly. Godinez is not being brave enough to use the complexity of the Cuban experience to take on settled progressive thought in today’s theater. But then this is a show, not an ideological debate.
From time to time, Chicago theater spins out a production where the director clearly has come up with an idea for every single moment. This is one of those shows. And, rarer still, Godinez’s “Measure for Measure” is a Shakespearean production with a heavy concept that works. Certainly, that means the heavily chopped text has to take a secondary position, but that’s fine with me when the overarching modern storytelling is this clear, potent and enveloping.
The last five minutes are breathtaking but, really, the whole show is a major achievement and, in all kinds of ways, an advocate for the ongoing relevance of this incredibly complicated play.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Measure for Measure” (3.5 stars)
When: Through Nov. 27
Where: Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Tickets: $49-$92 at 312-595-5600 or www.chicagoshakes.com