Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, often classified as a “problem play,” unsettles conventional boundaries between comedy and tragedy. House + Body’s returning production at Crow’s Theatre embraces that instability through a contemporary live-sound-stream adaptation. The concept is largely effective, although the production’s layered action requires sustained audience attention and can occasionally obscure the narrative.
In his programme note, director Christopher Manousos describes a high-stakes live-sound-stream adaptation that places Shakespeare’s language in a contemporary frame while balancing darkness, humour and moral uncertainty. The production pursues that aim by inviting the company of actors and audience to “spy on and reflect on the parallels between then and now.”
Shakespeare’s 1604 play centres on justice, authority and morality. After Isabella’s brother, Claudio, is sentenced to death, she attempts to save him and confronts a system in which power is unstable and moral certainty steadily erodes.
The production’s “Soundwave Shakespeare” format borrows the imaginative economy of old-time radio while making its sound-making process visible. As the audience hears and watches Shakespeare’s story unfold, a second narrative develops among the performers beneath the broadcast, creating a play-within-a-play structure that reframes the original’s concerns.
The result is a layered theatrical frame in which the broadcast and the performers’ off-air relationships increasingly intersect.
The five performers are introduced not by their Shakespearean characters but by their roles within the studio fiction. Danté Prince is the Sound Guy; Jamie Cavanagh plays the Best Friend of the Sound Stream Director Sébastien Heins. Katherine Gauthier appears as the Film Star and the director’s wife, whose undisclosed information becomes central to the secondary plot.
The immediate complication is the last-minute arrival of the Actor playing Isabella (Beck Lloyd), who has not rehearsed with the company. The newcomer must adjust to the pressure of the broadcast as the five actors divide all twenty roles in Measure for Measure and negotiate mounting tensions within the studio as the five performers work in real time.
The Studio Theatre is configured in the round, with two rectangular tables holding an audio mixer, microphones and Foley equipment at its centre. This visible apparatus makes sound production part of the action. Chris Malkowski’s sleek lighting gives the space a controlled, contemporary character, while Riel Reddick-Stevens’ sound design and composition establish a futuristic acoustic palette.
Manousos directs the increasingly complicated action with precision, maintaining control of the pace even as the two narrative levels converge. The ensemble moves fluently between the live broadcast and the studio drama. Prince’s resonant, radio-style delivery keeps the framing device clear. Heins and Cavanagh establish a credible friendship, with understated exchanges that foreshadow the revelation at the close of the first act. Gauthier and Lloyd bring composure and resilience to both the Shakespearean narrative and the performers’ parallel story.
The production returns repeatedly to a statement from Manousos’s programme note: “What is lawful is not necessarily what is morally just.”
That tension between legality and justice provides the production with its clearest thematic through-line.
Although the production’s double structure can make the action difficult to follow, its disciplined ensemble work and integrated sound design offer a thoughtful contemporary perspective on Shakespeare’s moral ambiguities.
Running time: approximately two hours and 10 minutes with one interval/intermission.
The production runs until October 11 in the Studio Theatre at Crow’s, 345 Carlaw Avenue, Toronto. For tickets: crowstheatre.com or call (647) 341-7390.
CROW’S THEATRE presents
A House + Body Production
Measure for Measure by William Shakespeare
Adapted by Christophe Manousos
Directed by Christopher Manousos
Sound Designer/Composer: Riel Reddick-Stevens
Lighting Designer: Chris Malkowski
Costume Designer: Andrew Broderick
Stage Manager: Nazerah Carlisle
Performers: Jamie Cavanagh, Katherine Gauthier, Sébastien Heins, Beck Lloyd, Danté Prince
