The Duchess [of Malfi] review: Jodie Whittaker play is robbed of its subtlety and dark magic

A proud, sexually confident woman is destroyed by controlling men in John Webster’s horrifying Jacobean tragedy The Duchess of Malfi. It’s a story that’s ripe for a feminist reimagining, and Scottish playwright and academic Zinnie Harris might well seem like the person for the job. But like a lecturer trying desperately to hammer her point into her students’ supine, hungover brains, she seems terrified of not being understood in The Duchess – robbing the original of its subtlety and dark magic in this production at London’s Trafalgar Theatre.

Jodie Whittaker returns to the stage after a long break (and a planet-hopping stint in Doctor Who) in the title role, glowing in a jewel-like red dress that symbolises the formidable wealth and carnal hunger she’s revelling in. Her brothers aren’t best pleased – and you could tell that from outer space, thanks to a text that supplements Webster’s original antifeminist arguments with crass warnings like “men want to get in your knickers!”.

This lumbering approach continues elsewhere. When new characters enter, their names flash up on stage in giant capitals, accompanied by a dated-feeling digital throb of bass. They declaim, facing right out into the audience, both their lines and their own significance in the play – fulfilling the role of a programme note, the duchess explains that her wealth and widowhood free her from the usual tight restrictions on 17th-century women. Or do they? She marries her honest steward Antonio to escape an arranged match. But soon, her brothers move to drag her back into her place: Ferdinand (Rory Fleck Byrne) is motivated by incestuous jealousy, and the Cardinal (Paul Ready) by pure evil, the subtler psychological contours of misogyny unexplored here.

Harris directs as well as adapts, using an overspilling ragbag of strategies borrowed from European directors’ theatre. Stark lighting. Ear-splitting judders of sound. A few times, characters step up to the microphone to sing out their inner lives, Whittaker revealing a beautifully soulful voice – but the device feels both hackneyed and underused. Tom Piper’s clinical white set design is – in a now-familiar stratagem – primed to show up this revenge tragedy’s inevitable blood.

The first act has a kind of satisfying snap and pace to it, saved by Whittaker’s spirited performance as she relishes her role’s fire and wit. But Harris’s direction isn’t equal to the play’s increasingly grim second act. Here, the Duchess is trapped in an outlined cube (if there’s one thing an auteur director loves, it’s putting a suffering woman in a box) and exposed to levels of mental torture even the American military would baulk at, forced to watch videos of her loved ones being murdered. There are horrific scenes of femicide. Then, the murdered women drift through what remains of the play in white silk nighties, ghost-like, to take on agency in the brothers’ downfall – a cheesy realisation of an intriguing concept.

Webster’s play is saturated with supernatural strangeness, with Ferdinand’s guilt eventually making him believe he’s a grave-robbing werewolf, but here, embarrassingly clumsy attempts at physical theatre have a Halloween-night silliness to them. This production is fatally lacking in tragic richness and weight. Still, there’s power in the boldness of Harris’s final gesture: her play emphasises themes of care, ultimately suggesting that men must take on responsibility for nurturing a new, better generation. It’s a thoughtful message, its impact spilt and splattered in this messy production.

Until 20 December