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Review of Shakespeare's Measure for Measure (directed by Giulia Crossley) at Weston Studio, The Millennium Centre, Cardiff, March 2009

These opening lines of Measure for Measure, where the Duke is wordily concerned not ‘‘t’affect speech and discourse’’, didn’t in fact immediately open the Black Sheep Company’s production of the play. With the violent sound of Marilyn Manson’s cover of ‘‘Tainted Love’’ pulsing, the sultry prostitutes and bawds posturing along the aisle railings before curtain promised a performance that would engage its audience, making them appropriately ill at ease in this restless play. However, the moment the performance started properly, the prostitutes moved to the stage with a rather static dance, a dumb show which climaxed with two prostitutes apparently giving Pompey (Irfan Ally) a blowjob as the Duke (Ben Edwards) looked over at the audience from directly above the scene which presumably led to the age guide of 15 . As this was certainly the most shocking element of the production, there was a sense in which the tension of this sexual foreplay was mistimed, causing the performance to climax too early. The estrangement of complacent members of the audience might have been admirable if it hadn’t soon become obvious that any shock tactics in this production were to prove superficial rather than thought-provoking. Measure for Measure, often labelled a ‘‘problem play’’, has the potential to create both humour and poignancy, but rather than challenging audience expectations of what a Shakespeare play might involve, the opening scene of this production was a somewhat forced, discouraging overture. The Black Sheep Company (not to be confused with Black Sheep Productions) may have produced Measure for Measure in a theatre dressed up as a dark and rather seedy industrial nightclub, but there, sadly, the darkness ended. The rather sparse