The Duchess of Malfi, New Players Theatre, Tuesday 4th May

The Duchess of Malfi's getting a good airing at the moment, in Greenwich, here under the arches of Charing Cross, and later in the year with a collaborative operatic treatment from English National Opera and scary interactive theatrical groundbreakers Punchdrunk. Greenwich stuck to a predictable, if effective, fascist-lite setting, and I have absolutely no idea what dark madness to expect from Punchdrunk. Vaulting Ambition, at the New Players, went with...the circus. It could have worked - perhaps some kind of totalitarian ringmaster regime? But it doesn't stick, and a Cardinal is still a Cardinal, even if he's Cardinaling in spangly pants. Only a few of the performers are circus trained; they are mesmerising enough to completely detract at times from the action of the play, and talented enough to make the main actors' attempts at circus stylings seem woefully inadequate. The only real gift of the design is to James Sobol Kelly as Bosola, whose pancake make-up creeps across his face, becoming more and more skull-like as he piles up the body-count. He's a grisly Buster Keaton, a haunted outsider in this production, and it's a testament to the greatness of the writing that this interpretation works as well as any of the other, more macho portrayals I've seen. Just when I thought I couldn't find clowns any more frightening...
The design's a pity - there are some excellent performances, and the production could have stood up perfectly well without the big-top malarkey. The whole Malfi family seem creepily intimate, making Ferdinand's advances to the Duchess easier to reconcile, and our Cardinal, Andrew Piper is quite clearly after Alan Rickman's job. Alinka Wright's a very foxy Julia, who provides an excellent counterpoint to Tilly Middleton's Duchess, whose wooing of Antonio is charmingly tentative, for all her insistence. There are some nice touches in terms of costume design - Alex Humes' werewolf turn is greatly helped by leather and fur, and the lighting is innovative.
With circus arts enjoying a renaissance of their own at the moment, it does them a disservice to crowbar them into renaissance drama. If you want circus, get yourself over to the Roundhouse. Better yet, get thyself to Circus Space and learn how to do it yourself.