The Duchess Of Malfi (Education Pack)

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Price: $127.84   

Product Feature

• DUCHESS OF MALFI, THE EDUCATION PACK (DVD MOVIE)

Product Description

Wienerworld has teamed up with Stage on Screen to release a brand new series of classic plays aimed at the student, teacher, lecturer and theatre lover alike. Each production is highly polished, using professional actors and directors at London's award-winning Greenwich Theatre. Filmed in crystal clear High Definition, these DVDs have been designed to deliver the look and feel of a live performance. The Duchess of Malfi is a popular choice as a set text, despite (or perhaps because of) the violence and horror of its later scenes. Generally considered to be the masterpiece of Jacobean playwright John Webster, it was first produced in around 1613. It's a macabre tragedy, based on actual events, and tends to be loved or hated by critics - while consistently captivating audiences across the centuries. Set in Italy in the early fifteenth century, it starts out as a love story, with the Duchess marrying beneath her class. However, her two brothers have other ideas.

The Duchess Of Malfi (Education Pack) Review

For most fans of Jacobean drama, John Webster's THE DUCHESS OF MALFI (1613) is the most powerful tragedy of that period not written by a man named Shakespeare. This opinion is so widely held that the play has become a standard selection in all of the drama anthologies of the period.
It is also a ferociously demanding piece of theater, full of complex speeches, strange reversals, and extravagant stage effects. For this reason, it is seldom performed. Your odds of seeing it in the U.S. are only slightly better than those of meeting the author.
Though neither the distributor (Stage On Screen) nor the dramatic company (Greenwich Theatre, London) were known to me, I bought this DVD blind because I knew that, however uneven the production might be, this was likely to be my only chance of ever seeing this great play performed.
I slowly realized that I was watching a marvelously spoken, intelligently staged, and professionally recorded production performed in front of a live audience.
The Duchess is played magnificently by a statuesque redhead (Aslin McGuckin) who accomplishes the difficult task of projecting the nobility-in-suffering Webster apparently intended this character to embody. In counterpoint to this, the tool villain Bosola (Tim Treloar)delivers his character's soliloquies with fine shadings of melancholy and outrage. And the hedonistic Cardinal (Mark Hatfield) is full of energy, delighted at this own corruption. While all of the actors are well cast, these three have voices as supple and distinctive as musical instruments.
This production relies on a combination of minimal, all-black sets (outlines, really), colorful costumes which suggest the period, and sharp contrasts in lighting to create dramatic effects. The recording, both audio and video, is (to my eyes and ears) as good as one might expect in theater itself. Better actually, because you always have a good view of the action. So I have no hesitation in recommending this DVD to others theater lovers.
One final note: One of the puzzles in the plot is the jealousy of the Duchess's twin brother Ferdinand and his subsequent madness. I have been told (by the eminent Professor John J. Perry) that it was a common bit of folklore that twins had incest in the womb and that Webster was drawing on this folk belief as motivation for Ferdinand's persecution of his sister after her secret marriage.

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