The Duchess: Jodie Whittaker enthralls in this grisly, modernised Jacobean tragedy
As David Tennant transfers Macbeth to the West End and Ncuti Gatwa prepares for an upcoming production of The Importance of Being Earnest, fellow Doctor Who alumna Jodie Whittaker makes her own return to the stage. It’s been more than a decade since her last theatrical role in the National’s Antigone (ironically, alongside Christopher Eccleston). The Duchess of Malfi, John Webster’s complex 1613 heroine, is a meaty and testing role for her comeback. But happily – if that’s the right word to use for this harrowing updated version of the grisly Jacobean tragedy – Whittaker proves more than up to the challenge with an enthrallingly layered take on the formidable Duchess.
This reworking by Zinnie Harris (first staged in 2019) doesn’t radically strike out on its own terms: it broadly follows the trajectory of Webster’s play but foregrounds the female characters and the misogyny at play (a choice that renders mixed results). Modernising these events highlights how horribly relevant its themes of male violence still are. In this version, the recently widowed Duchess gets the first word: the play boldly opens with Whittaker at a microphone stand on a white-tiled stage, wearing a sexy Fifties-style red sheath dress, losing herself in a song about desire.
Her reverie is broken by the intrusion of her brothers, Ferdinand and the Cardinal, who have been listening in disgust from above. The Duchess is glad to be rid of her boring husband, embraces her sexual freedom and laughs in her brothers’ faces when they attempt to rein her in, a reaction that infuriates their sense of importance. When she “disobeys” them by marrying her steward Antonio behind their backs, a devastatingly bloody chain of events unfolds.
Whittaker is magnificent at seamlessly shifting between emotional states and at navigating these shallow male egos: she exudes a defiant, imperial vitality in the face of slut-shaming and attempts to restrict the Duchess’s agency. But she can also be playfully teasing and sultry when seducing Joel Fry’s insecure, slightly useless Antonio or full of joie de vivre when she orgasmically devours an apricot on all fours.
The brutal torture scenes that follow in the grim second half, at the hands of her twin Ferdinand (played with sadistic, raving resolve by Rory Fleck Byrne), are distressing and overwhelming. Trapped within a rusting cube frame with only a bath and a chair, she is psychologically tormented, bombarded with manipulated video footage projected on the back wall, flashing stark white lights and a cacophony of prison bells and gunshots. Dressed in a dirty sack-like dress, Whittaker veers between a howling anguish and steely courage that sends shivers down the spine.
Another impressive turn comes from Paul Ready as the Cardinal. He’s a world away from Motherland’s simpering stay-at-home dad Kevin, here radiating a disquieting, chilling malevolence as he bullies, sexually assaults and murders his way through the play. Such scenes are shocking in their brutality but when other moments call for more subtlety, the script frustratingly insists on spelling out that such behaviours are wrong and misogynistic. It’s at points like these that you most miss Webster’s poetry.
In his play, Webster kills off the Duchess before the final act, leaving the male characters to destroy each other in a bloodbath. Here, Harris keeps the Duchess and the other female victims on as ghostly presences until the final scene, bloody visual reminders of male violence, who enact their revenge by whispering to their tormentors from beyond the grave. While the desire to do this is understandable, it feels more muddled and less striking than their absence would have been. When the gory conclusion arrives, the blackly comic edge to it all verges on the ridiculous, and had audiences nervously laughing on the night I attended.
Despite this tonally jarring ending – and some occasionally distracting technical interventions – Harris pulls off a pacy, intense production. Revivals of Webster’s classic come around often enough, but Whittaker and this superb ensemble are surely reason enough to pay the Trafalgar a visit. Who knows? It may be another decade before you have a chance to see her onstage again.
Until Dec 20; trafalgartheatre.com