Our producers had determined to stage Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare, one of the strangest of all his plays. The wild boy Claudio is sentenced to death for having sex by the uptight bureaucrat Angelo. Hypocritical and corrupt, Angelo offers to let Claudio go free, if he, Angelo, can have sex with Isabella, Claudio's sister. Isabella, of course, intends to become a nun and not just any nun but an uber-chaste nun. Presented with the lascivious bargain as a way to save her unjustly condemned brother, Isabella refuses. Her chastity is more important than her brother.
Casting the play went well. The fellow playing Angelo was stern and serious, manly with a twinge of cowardice, confident while overly self-adoring. Claudio, by contrast, was smooth and attractive. His every word sounded charming but, in ways, a bit too staged, delightful and contrived. Everyone in the cast and crew lusted for Claudio.
Isabella proved more problematic. No one can lay claim to understanding the mind of Isabella. Beautiful beyond measure, innocently seductive, as desired as she is unavailable, the character is an enigma roll. What actress can wrap herself around a role like that? Our Isabella was certainly selected for her beauty, for none of the story made sense without that driving force of sparking longed-for sexuality. She was tested, then, in containing that aesthetic with an acted will. As pretty as the woman was, she had a proportionally herculean task of asserting her unavailability.
I don't know how well the players knew each other before the play began rehearsal, but any deficiency in their acquaintance was rectified soon. All the stage is an orgy, a rotating and teeming conflagration of emotions and bodies, splayed across the hard wood, teasing and touching and wearing and wanting, pleading and pleasing. I won't attempt to chart the interplay of relationships that came and went with each drawn and closed curtain. Actors are lovers. Despite any rules designed to contain the furious eroticisms, they loved.
No one can say how Isabella fell under Angelo's spell. I think we all assumed that Isabella would join up with Claudio. They seemed to be cut from the same cloth, visually appealing, socially talented, licentious and libidinous. Angelo had a seriousness that seemed separate from the characters of the other two, sharp and severe. He carried an air of disapproval that seemed completely contrary to the libertine attitudes of our Isabella. Perhaps it is because opposites attract that Isabella was drawn to Angelo. Under his stern gaze, she became a melted youth. By the eighth rehearsal, in our second week of working together, Isabella shared Angelo's bed. A symphony of signs made their union undeniably apparent. Her hand rested easily on Angelo's thigh.
Love is never a static affair. Like any force of nature, with every action there is a reaction, although in the realms of lust, the equal and opposite nature of the resulting vectors are anything but equal. Our Claudio expressed, in almost subtle and generally non-verbal ways, an intense dissatisfaction at Isabella's choice of companion. His antipathy worked in two distinct directions. First, Claudio believed that Isabella would be better suited to his company. In this we all agreed but love knows no reason and that was for Isabella to decide. Second, Claudio held steadfast to the idea that under no circumstances, even in the unexplainable reality where she did not choose him, Isabella should not abide Angelo. He was insufferable and Claudio was offended that Isabella should degrade herself so terribly.
