Measure for Measure
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-Upon-Avon

THE deceptively simple plot of one of the Bard’s most problematic plays draws on conventional motifs, in which an unnamed ruler hands over his power to a deputy with the task of cleaning up his morally dissipated state, while a woman is challenged to give way to the new ruler’s lust in order to save her brother’s life.  

It’s nominally a comedy, so of course all ends happily. But Greg Doran’s sharply etched production raises a question about the psychology of power which, understandably, comes into its own in modern times.

In it, Antony Byrne’s troubled Duke peremptorily breaks up his Straussian-waltzing court to launch his sociological experiment by handing the job of cleaning up the stews of 19th-century Vienna to Scottish Presbyterian Angelo (Sandy Grierson), a Putin lookalike.