Robert Tanitch reviews The Duchess [of Malfi] at Trafalgar Theatre, London

“I am the Duchess of Malfi still,” says the stoic Duchess under torture. It’s a famous line in John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy. But at Trafalgar Theatre, the audience is no longer watching John Webster’s tragedy, they are watching Zinnie Harris’s totally unnecessary modern rewrite. The line has lost its magnificent impact, and the play has lost its Renaissance grandeur.

Webster’s sombre and morbid melodrama, which premiered in 1613, is set one hundred years earlier in a corrupt Italian court, notorious for its violence and perverted passions. The play, based on true events, tells a characteristic Jacobean horror story of ambition, lust and murder.

The Duchess, a young widow, disobeys her two brothers and remarries in secret her low-born steward and has three children by him. When the brothers find out, they are so angry, they hire a killer to torment and murder her.

The appalling and gruesome horrors she is made to suffer so steadfastly led Bernard Shaw and many other critics to dismiss Webster as a Tussaud Laureate. The play has regularly got a bad press because of its sensational violence and frank sexuality.

Jodie Whittaker returns to the stage after a long absence to play the defiant Duchess who, forced to choose between honour and lust, opts for apricots and sex and is strangled to death with a rope.

Rory Fleck Byrne is Antonio, her bitter, twisted brother, who has incestuous feelings for her and goes stark raving mad in drag and bites Bosola’s ear. Paul Ready is her other brother, a carnal Cardinal, who murders his mistress by stuffing torn Bible pages down her throat.

Jude Owusu is Bosola, the former servant and murderer, employed to spy on the Duchess. It’s a much more rewarding role in Webster’s play.

Zinnie Harris’s script uses a lot of bad language and has none of Webster’s poetry and pathos. Harris also directs a poorly designed production The absurd over-the-top bloodbath finale raises a lot of unwanted laughter.

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