Women Beware Women (review)

Perhaps the most infamous play of the Jacobean stage—the one which ran for the greatest number of continual performances and caused something approaching a diplomatic incident—was Thomas Middleton's A Game at Chess. While that work allegorizes contemporary political figures as chess pieces and makes great play with the connotations of the opposed colours, Women Beware Women actually stages a chess game which serves, within the narrative, to distract the Widow (in black) while Bianca ("White") is ensnared. The chess match plays out a ruthless struggle between pieces of differing social status (a pawn up to a king) which is enacted by characters within the play (Bianca up to the Duke of Florence). The complex rules of chess, the subtlety of its strategies and tactics, make it an apt metaphor for the intrigue and political manoeuvring that takes place in this dangerous, Machiavellian setting, a place where subterfuge and backstabbing are nevertheless ostensibly practiced according to the rules of etiquette demanded by certain social and gender relations. Richard Hudson's monochrome design on a black tessellated floor, reminiscent of the squares of a chessboard, drew attention to the analogy. Here, it seemed to hint, was a society that conducted itself in accordance with an elaborate set of norms or expectations or, shockingly, chose to conduct itself in defiance of them. While most of the characters wore all black or all white at different points in the production, the servants, hovering upstage with trays of drinks, wore a Harlequin-like livery that alternated black and white across their bodies. These "pawns," the costume seemed to suggest, were available to the highest bidder and could equally have functioned for good or ill, depending on the whims of their masters.

Though less obviously, there was a sense that other characters too were similarly mobile, protesting adherence to a principle only to change their minds when it was socially or politically expedient. Most noticeable here was the falling off of Bianca from her matrimonial love and her disturbingly rapid acceptance of her role as the Duke's concubine. Of course, Middleton's play is distinctly uncomfortable here and this production, in its detailed examination of Tim Pigott-Smith's cynical lecher and Hayley Atwell's slyly ulterior Bianca, did well to maintain this sense of anxiety. Similarly, Rob Edwards's Hippolito, desirous of his own niece, sought to conceal his passion from her and to wrestle with his conscience. However, as soon as Livia described a solution—to tell Isabella that she and her uncle were not related—Hippolito threw himself into the incestuous affair as though his previous misgivings had never existed. Both in her manipulation of Isabella's naiveté and in her devious entertainment of the Widow (over the chess board), Penelope Wilton's Livia was obsequious and disarmingly charming. In her subsequent wooing of the younger Leantio, she showed herself to be as sexually hungry as the others, but without their sentimentality. Her relationship with Leantio was one that would serve both their interests; Wilton's bluff comic delivery made that unmistakable.

Bruce MacKinnon's Ward and Paul Rider's Sordido were a comic but vividly contrasting duo. At his first entrance, playing something like lacrosse (for the text's "trap-stick"), the Ward was got up in absurdly sporty attire—a vest, his short breeches hanging on suspenders, one black-and-white hooped sock pulled up and the other down, and wearing a headband and wristbands like a competitive tennis player. The fact that Sordido managed...