Theatre
Interview
The Duchess: “We’ve all wanted to get some sort of revenge…”
Talking love, death, power and patriarchy with the cast of Zinnie Harris’ new adaptation of John Webster’s famous revenger
Around the same time that Shakespeare was wrapping up his career with The Tempest, John Webster’s The Duchess Of Malfi was first appearing on the London stage. It’s one of those plays that has lasted for hundreds of years; a name many of us know but few of us could recall the details of as clearly as those of Shakespeare’s greatest tragedies.
“I think I did it at drama school, but if I’m f*cked if I can remember it,” admits Joel Fry in a rehearsal room in Kensington. “I definitely either did it or saw it and I remembered nothing about it. But this, I think, is better. Zinnie [Harris]’ changed it a lot. It’s not really that play anymore. I would remember this one…”
“Poor f*cking Webster,” laughs Fry’s co-star Paul Ready. “But I hear what you’re saying because I’ve seen the play a few times, maybe twice in my life, I’ve read it… [but] Shakespeare is much more immediate to me than Webster or Jacobean plays have ever been, so I’ve never really been drawn to the play, although I’ve understood that there’s something in it, some themes that are really vital. But I haven’t ever really got that from watching or reading the original, and what Zinnie has done is shown me what’s underneath the skin of it. She’s taken what that original is, and kind of enhanced the characters for me and enhanced the themes so I can see them more clearly.”
The Duchess Of Malfi tells a violent story of gender oppression and class tension – the revenge of two brothers after their sister defies their wishes and marries beneath her station. It’s a story that still compels us when we hear it, which is why Webster’s play has been staged consistently over the last 400 years. Now Zinnie Harris’ adaptation – which transforms the play simply into The Duchess – offers something new.
“It’s not like we’re doing The Duchess Of Malfi in Baghdad,” says Fry. “It’s not like that. It is actually fundamentally different. It’s not just got a sheet of new paint.”
Fry takes on the role of Antonio, the objectionable choice whom Jodie Whittaker’s titular Duchess secretly marries. Paul Ready plays the Cardinal, one of her villainous brothers. “It’s partly a family drama, this, but a really messed-up family drama,” he says. “The Cardinal is power hungry. He’s driven to get as much power and influence as he can in this world, and he doesn’t really care what’s sacrificed in order to get there. He’s a religious figure, but something lurks underneath that.” On playing across from Whittaker, Ready says, “she’s brilliant, and she does what actors do, which is to come to the rehearsal and bring her inquisitive, curious mind. She brings a lot of power. She brings a lot of humour with her.”
What is the compelling element of Webster’s drama that sees us still gripped by it all these years later though? “Death,” says Fry, simply. “It’s coming for us all.”
Ready lists other timeless themes: “Oppression of women, misogyny, patriarchy, power struggles, love. There’s a bit of love in there. A smidgen of love.” But they both agree that it’s the shadow of death that holds our focus, and keeps us tied to a genre that has never gone out of fashion.
“We’ve all been there, right?” says Fry. “We’ve all kind of wanted to get some sort of revenge. We don’t really do it these days, but back then… We’ve grown a bit, but we still probably, in our hearts, would like to get revenge. We just don’t. These stories allow us to fulfil some fantasy we still hold in ourselves.”
“I’d say there’s something in that, definitely,” says Ready. “Some kind of catharsis.”
“We let it out in these stories,” continues Fry. “Nature is pretty cruel, isn’t it, really? I mean, it’s a cruel thing, and we are actually still pretty cruel, but trying to not be, I guess.”
It could be said that revenge dramas give us a pretty bleak view of human nature, but Fry and Ready both believe that The Duchess suggests a way forward.
“Children are hope, aren’t they?” says Fry. “That’s what hope essentially is. Ultimately, outside of this play, all of us will die, and it probably won’t be great, but what you’ll have is the knowledge that there’s somebody who’s gonna live longer than you are, and so it all keeps going beyond your own death.”
“I don’t think it’s necessarily good for us to watch things that are relentlessly bleak, without some hope at the end, but hope that is not just an empty word,” says Ready. “There is clear hope at the end of this script – we just need to get there in rehearsals.” At the time of speaking, the cast are in week three of preparations for their debut at the Trafalgar Theatre and haven’t yet unpacked how this ending will actually be played. “One of the themes of this play is that hope can be an empty word unless there’s action,” says Ready. “I think that’s what’s coming at the end of this play.”
They’re close enough now to the production’s start date to consider how what they’ve created will be received by an audience, though, and they both agree that even those familiar with the source material will be surprised.
“I hope they’re asking each other questions about it,” says Fry. “Or they dream about it that night, and they wake up and carry on with their lives, and then eventually they go, “Yeah, The Duchess…” and they’ve still got kind of some sort of lingering question about exactly what they think about the play. Whether they enjoy it or not, I hope they think about what happens to the people in it, [and] how that relates to them and the people that they know.”
Which is, of course, both the appeal and the horror of a revenge drama – we may find ourselves relating. Whether that’s the case or not, The Duchess will be a compelling watch.
“As cheesy as it sounds, it has got a bit of everything,” says Fry. “I mean, it has the capability to have literally a bit of all of it. It sounds like such a cliché, but I think it’s true. This one could be funny and shocking and emotional… I think it has the potential to have it all.”
The Duchess opens at the Trafalgar Theatre on 5 October for an 11-week run. Find tickets here
