Stephane Braunschweig's 'Mesure pour Mesure' (Shakespeare, 'Measure for Measure')

The production of Measure for Measure that the French director Stephane Braunschweig presented at the Fiftieth Official Edinburgh Festival in 1997, and then in Nanterre (suburb of Paris) and Orleans, offers a strongly personal interpretation of the problematics of this dark comedy. Sustained by a clear, albeit criticized, slow diction and a highly evocative, enormous, circular mobile set in wood and metal, the manipulation of the characters by the Duke in disguise is considered as the main moral contradiction of this play. This staging rejects the happy marriages which conclude the action, but underlines the terrible moral crisis the characters have to face. The only physical union is the incestuous embrace that the sister imposes on her brother in his cell. On the stage, this trespassing is symbolised by their stepping outside the playing-area representing the prison cell.