"Measure for Measure" is one of Shakespeare's funniest and most underperformed comedies. In its thoroughly charming current production, the Promethean Theater Ensemble offers a boisterous take on the play's central preoccupation: the impossible task of regulating sexual conduct with firm, enforceable laws.
As the play opens, Vienna's lenient Duke Vincentio (Robert Tobin) leaves stern Lord Angelo (Brian Pastor) in charge of cleaning up the increasingly X-rated streets of Vienna. The city's thriving brothels are to be abolished and an old, dormant law dictating death to fornicators is to be enforced. Claudio (Zach Clark) falls victim to the new regime. Having impregnated his fiancee, he faces beheading unless his sister Isabella (Beth Wolf) can convince Angelo to have mercy. Isabella's shining virtue (she wants to be a nun) turns out to be the ultimate turn-on, and icy Angelo succumbs to the fires of lust. The plot unfolds from there: a tangled web of deceits, disguises, bed-tricks and head-tricks.
The play has traditionally been classified as a problem comedy. In the ambiguous final scene, punishments don't fit their crimes any more than new husbands (there are several) seem likely to fit their new wives. Without downplaying the play's problematic aspects, under June Eubanks's direction, the irrepressibly humorous ensemble highlights the absurdities of the mismatch between impersonal institutions – crucially, law and marriage – and messy, unpredictable human nature.
Promethean's entire cast does a stellar job, and it is hard to single out individual performances. Nick Lake as Claudio's naughty friend Lucio deserves special mention, and an early scene in which Angelo's second-in-command, Escalus (Emma Kate Starling) questions the bawd Pompey (Marco Minichiello) and his arresting officer, Constable Elbow (Derek Jarvis), is ensemble acting at its finest. With a colorful minimalist set (Nick Rastenis) and inventive costumes (Jessica Salinus), this raffish, warm-hearted "Measure for Measure" is a delight for the eye and mind.