The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster, performed at the Southwark Playhouse

First performed in 1613, The Duchess of Malfi is a dark tale of jealousy, obsessive aristocratic honour and revenge. Set abroad, the play subtly voices contemporary local anxieties over Parliaments' decreasing influence and the excess of princely power. Commencing their autumn tour, Eyestrings revives the macabre play and brings it in to a modern setting with slight adjustments to the original script. The problem, unfortunately, is that with the collation of 1950s evening gowns, 2010s business suits and credit cards, exactly which modern setting we are being presented with seems confused.

The play follows the stoic and strong-minded Duchess in her plight for love after she has been widowed, defying her brothers’ desires for her to remain pure not poison the courts’ bloodline. Regrettably, the plays’ hesitance to place itself in a time is not its only frustrating feature. For much of the play all seven actors are onstage which, although ultimately contributes to a tension of espionage and prying, initially steals a sense of intimacy and feels congested.

Owen Horsley’s direction also seems intent on establishing a comic madness amongst all of the characters, taking away the plays’ capacity for moral ruling and leaving a feeling of detachment. The ingenuity of Webster’s social critique seems to have been abandoned. This proves most frustrating when the Duchess, having endured suffering at the hands of her jealous brother, Ferdinand, bravely refuses degradation by claiming, ‘I am Duchess of Malfi still’, however seems frantic and feeble in Eyestrings production.

Nonetheless, Horsley reworks The Duchess of Malfi by adapting the plot to cater for the more open-minded modern day audience. In particular, Horsley’s suggestion that Ferdinand’s possessiveness over the Duchess is as much to do with honour as with an incestuous desire, cleverly elaborates on the mild suggestions in the original text. In the plays’ final scenes, Horsley has the Duchess stand at the back of the stage and read out the stage directions as the drama unfolds. This revitalizes the script and explicitly shows the power of the Duchess even after her murder.

In this sense, there are moments of great power, where the brutality of plot is gripping, provocative and absorbing. Sadly, this intensity is preceded by other moments that feel as if a handful of individually clever ideas have been thrown at one another and imploded on impact. Horsley’s production is engaging, but unfortunately struggles to articulate exactly what direction it is taking from the original script.