A radio ad for the Goodman Theatre’s Measure for Measure calls it “rare”—not because theater companies tend to avoid staging this dark, unruly Shakespeare play, but because director Robert Falls has set it in late-1970s New York City. Yet anyone who’s spent much time in the theater over the last few decades knows there’s nothing unusual about that. It’s become de rigeur to set A Midsummer Night’s Dream on Daytona Beach or Hamlet on the moon.
At first blush this story seems ill fitted to New York City in the disco era—or any other era, for that matter. No duke ruled there, people didn’t speak in Elizabethan vernacular, and extramarital sex sure as hell wasn’t a capital offense. But Falls and his savvy design team set the play not in an earthly Manhattan but rather in a fever dream of New York, something akin to Gotham City, where every vice and virtue is inflated to hallucinogenic scale.
Through 4/14: Wed-Thu 7:30 PM, Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn, 312-443-3800, goodmantheatre.org, $25-$86.
