Life in society is filled with double standards, hypocrisy and infuriating frustration. Sometimes the only way we can hope to keep from crying is to spur ourselves into laughter.
Set in the Wild West of the 18th Century, Desperate Measures stages the outrageous episodes of the attempts to save a condemned person’s life. However, it can be viewed as a two hour hope for the salvation of humanity with one 15 minute intermission.
The musical is an adaptation of what is often referred to as one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” – Measure for Measure. The play is difficult to classify because there is no ignoble plight from high to be considered a Tragedy. Yet, the story is too cringeworthy to be funny. Shakespeare uses his deft sense of irony to show the inhumanity of social systems and frail fallibility of human nature. Could the law be truly righteous if it takes people’s lives? Could a chaste, pious life of Christianity be considered pure if it deprives us of our ability to love? Shakespeare also uses one of his favorite ploys where deception reveals the truth, very much like the nature of theater itself.
Although this musical adaptation is sized down to a cast of 6 people for Off-Broadway, the performance explores the original play’s themes and dilemmas with ingenious innovation. The Governor relentlessly rules the moral integrity of the land. Yet, he is too willing to make compromises for his own lascivious urges. The law enforcing Sheriff proves the compassionate character willing to deceive the governor in hopes of releasing a prisoner. The aspiring nun reflects the bawd. The condemned man reflects the atheist priest. The parallel lines of characters and episodes follow their course in a non-Euclidean universe where they frequently overlap and intersect, or more appropriately for the setting, ricochet like bullets bouncing between the rock walls of a canyon.
The Bawd, Bella Rose played by Lauren Molina, hilariously steals a number of scenes with her wisecracking sass. The Sheriff, played by Peter Saide, drawls the iambic pentameter of the heroic couplets like a desert sunset till the sky twinkles with stars. The condemned man, Johnny Blood played by Conor Ryan, alternates between a clownish sadness to dust devil dances. The chemistry between him and Bella Rose is a riot. The Governor played by Nick Wyman does duck steps across the stage with an absurd German accent while Father Morse played by Gary Marachek staggers through the scenes as the drunken priest quoting the nihilism of Nietzsche. Often, the show seems to revolve around the convent novice and sister to Johnny Blood, Susanna played by Sarah Parnicky, who lights up the stage.
The songs are witty and charming while the book is written in cleverly accessible verse, mostly following the lines of rhyming couplets in iambic pentameter. Shakespeare’s befuddling scene where the condemned man meets his sister in the jail is portrayed with crisp comic drama. As they vacillate through the conundrums weighing life with salvation, chastity with love, righteousness with mercy, Johnny Blood closes the argument with a moral message from a new Natural Theology: “It’s Good to Be Alive.” Another great scene that is hilariously choreographed and even out-Shakespeares Shakespeare is a variation of the “bed trick” where Susanna and Bella Rose mirror one another in wedding dresses to dupe the governor as the musical gallops up to the play’s finale.
The musical addresses the moral perplexities presented by Shakespeare, but renders them in a truly comic fashion. It is profound and funny. The dark depths are lit up with laughter.
Desperate Measures is playing at the New World Stages at 340 West 50th Street.
Garrett Buhl Robinson is a poet, novelist and performing artist. www.gbrobinson.com
