RSC Friends

A very black comedy, the audience tittered uneasily at first at the broad humour of this vicious satire on Christian hypocrisy and prejudice against the Jews.

Jasper Britton pulls off the difficult job of making the jew, Barabas the unrepentant murderer of his daughter, her suitors, two friars and a whole convent of nuns, an engaging and supremely watchable character.He retains the audience’s horrified fascination throughout the play. Marlow makes this possible by describing a society where treachery and corruption infects relationships at every level of society. Barabas is as much victim as perpetrator.

Barabas pays his oppressors back in kind. The moral guardians of society, the clerics, turn out to be as avaricious and venal as everyone else.He cynically observes that’religion hides much mischief from suspicion’ Meanwhile, Barabas’s servant Itchamore, played with a beguiling naivety and demonic energy by Lanre Malaolu, has been seduced by the prevailing mores of careless treachery into betraying his master.

In one of the most shocking and poignant moments in the play Catrin Stewart playing Abigail, the jew’s loyal and spirited daughter is tricked into collaborating in her father’s dastardly schemes. She rebels when she realises she has helped kill her lover and is in turn poisoned by her father.

Meanwhile, the bellicose Muslim Turks who have the distinction of being the sole players to pursue their ends with a straightforward and honourable pugnacity are in their turn betrayed leaving Malta a no better place than it was but once again under Christian control.

The set, costumes and music are all excellent contributing to the plays changing mood and convincingly grounding this production in the sixteenth century. Well worth seeing.