Performance Dates: Tuesday 12 to Saturday 16 July 2016
directed by Kirrie Wratten.
The First Duty of Society is Justice
Brothels and nunneries, betrothals and beheadings. Shakespeare’s dark comedy shows us a world of political corruption and sexual power games.
After years of turning a blind eye, the authorities of Vienna are finally clamping down on prostitution – and on sex. Suddenly a young man finds himself condemned to death for making his fiancée pregnant, and his sister, a novice nun, is determined to plead for his life. But truth and mercy are expendable commodities, and nothing can be trusted – not even justice…
Shakespeare was at the midpoint of his career when he wrote this searching exploration of the relationship between the power of the state and the freedom of the individual. It is now four hundred years since Shakespeare’s death, but the playwright has lost none of his capacity to shock, or to entertain.
