'Measure for Measure': Pop the cork and settle in for the latest free Shakespeare in Griffith Park

By Margaret Gray

July 14, 2017 8 AM PT

Every summer I’m surprised by how much I enjoy the Independent Shakespeare Co.’s Griffith Park Free Shakespeare Festival. Performances start at 7 p.m., when the sun is still a bit too bright and the actors are oddly dressed figures in the distance, shouting British things I can’t quite hear over the crinkling of potato chip bags in the crowd.

I should be grouchy, but I’m elated. I know that soon the sun will go down, the crickets will sing, the potato chips will disappear and everybody on the hillside will be rapt, swept up in the unfolding story.

It’s powerful magic, al fresco Shakespeare, and it would probably work even if the production weren’t awesome. Nobody lugs a picnic basket here expecting a radical directorial vision. It’s a free show; it doesn’t have to be wonderful. But often, it is.

Independent Shakespeare co-founders David Melville and Melissa Chalsma, who are married and trade off directing and starring, revel as much in the oddity of Shakespeare’s plays — the bits that don’t quite make sense to us now — as in the plays’ enduring wit and humanity.

“Measure for Measure,” this summer’s opener, directed by Chalsma and starring Melville, is a daring choice. Published with the comedies in the First Folio, “Measure” is considered a “problem play,” caught between genres. While it offers an amusing and ribald crew of low-lifes such as the brothel-keeper Mistress Overdone (Xavi Moreno), her pimp Pompey Bum (Lorenzo González) and the dimwitted constable Elbow (Richard Azurdia), it also gets seriously dark.

The villain, Angelo (William Elsman), sentences Claudio to death for having premarital sex. When Claudio’s sister, nun-in-training Isabella (Kalean Ung), intercedes on his behalf, Angelo offers to spare Claudio’s life for a price: her chastity. She sleeps with him (or so Angelo thinks; it’s dark), and then he has Claudio executed anyway (or so he thinks; it’s someone else’s head).

If anybody deserves a bloody end, it’s the hypocritical, power-abusing Angelo. But instead of a comeuppance, he gets a loving wife. He regards the marriage as a punishment, but still. Isabella is then “rewarded” with a marriage proposal of her own. Does she see it as a reward? Shakespeare neglected to include her reaction. Our expectations of justice and mercy get completely upended.

The most mysterious character in “Measure,” the instigator of its plot, is the Duke of Vienna, Vincentio (Melville). Vienna has grown corrupt under his slack leadership, but he doesn’t want to be the heavy. So he hands his power over to Angelo, known to be tough on crime, and pretends to leave town. Secretly, though, he dresses up as a friar and connives behind the scenes to thwart Angelo’s decisions and to save Claudio. Is he a sinister mastermind who enjoys playing with people’s lives? Or is he trying to teach everybody a lesson in Christian charity?

In Melville’s delicious comic turn, Vincentio is a well-intentioned but socially awkward bumbler, carried away by enthusiasm for his own half-baked schemes and never sure how to extricate himself from the messes he makes. He’s always in a hurry, always embarrassed, bad at explanations, puzzled by what to do with his hands and prone to blurting out information at the wrong moments. He stages grand scenes of revelation and redemption but neglects to work out the technicalities — like how he can possibly play two characters at the same time — and steps all over his own lines. That everything works out in the end seems to surprise him as much as anybody else.

This interpretation may not solve all the dark riddles of “Measure,” but it makes even the longest and most complicated scenes fun to watch. Chalsma directs with a fast pace, a slapsticky physicality and a light tone, and the actors bring charming touches to their roles. Although the evening raises questions about power, corruption, morality and forgiveness that we haven’t managed to answer in 400 years, it contains more sweetness than stings (especially after the bees go to sleep).

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