Lighthearted? Not by any ‘Measure’

IN Shakespeare’s “Measure for Measure,” a tyrant threatens to execute a young man for premarital sex but then tells the prisoner’s sister that she could save her brother’s life by giving up her own chastity to the tyrant.

“A lighthearted comedy,” right?

Until just the other day, that was the description used on the UCLA Live website and in radio promotions for the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre production of “Measure for Measure,” which will open a 21-performance run at the Freud Playhouse on Wednesday.

But asked about the adjective “lighthearted,” UCLA Live Director David Sefton professed surprise and said he “never would have sanctioned it.” According to Shana Mathur, director of marketing and communications for UCLA Live, the word was pulled from the website and the radio promotions the next day.

It’s fair enough to describe “Measure for Measure” as “a problem comedy,” Sefton said, but “it definitely isn’t light.”