‘Downton Abbey’ Just Landed on Broadway, Kind of: ‘Time and The Conways,’ ‘Measure For Measure,’ and ‘The Home Place’

By Tim Teeman

The Elevator Repair Service is a brilliant experimental theatre company, famous for recasting classic texts anew, as with Gatz, their epic adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Their Measure For Measure, at the Public Theater, again begins in an office, or newsroom, with lots of phones and people sitting. They are wearing 1930s/’40s clothing, and other shiny odd things that belong 30 years later. What then follows will largely be governed by what you know of Measure For Measure, and what you do not.
Richard Termine

Shakespeare’s story isn’t totally lost. Isabella (Rinne Groff) is still left to plead for the life of her imprisoned brother Claudio (Greig Sargeant) to judge Angelo (Pete Simpson). Simpson has the most fun of anyone on stage; his insane gait, sudden leaps and falls, and agonized scrunches of the body bring to mind an especially bonkers John Cleese as Basil Fawlty.

As well as an exercise in animating the original text, this production, directed with typical imaginative invention by John Collins, is an exercise in what text is, and how it should be performed, which becomes visible when words are screened from a projector over the walls and ceiling of the stage design. As the speed at which they are said, the tone they are said in, and what is being said, changes, we are left thinking: “What are these things called words, and how should we say them?”

Excerpt from “‘Downton Abbey’ Just Landed on Broadway, Kind of: ‘Time and The Conways,’ ‘Measure For Measure,’ and ‘The Home Place’” by Tim Teeman. Read the full article here.