Brave Spirits Theatre presents a riveting performance of ‘The Dutchess of Malfi’

Katie Culligan as the Duchess. [Claire Kimball]

By David Siegel 

Words have lethal consequences in the clear-eyed, unflinching production of The Duchess of Malfi from Brave Spirits Theatre. Under the sure-handed direction of Casey Kaleba, this is a gripping performance full of verbal wrath, physical terror, and compelling characters.

First published in 1623, John Webster’s Jacobean tragedy hits many a contemporary button in its tale about two powerful brothers who decide to make an honor killing of their own sister, the Duchess of Malfi.

What was the duchess’ crime? Well, she is not submissive to her controlling brothers. She confounds her brothers by remarrying soon after the death of her first husband. She commits a most serious crime in her brothers’ minds by both marrying without their permission and to a man of lower status.

Then she has the boldness to have children with her new husband. By having children, the noble family line and fortunes would pass to her children, not to either of her childless brothers. As the duchess says, “If all my royal kindred/ Lay in my way unto this marriage/ I’d make them my low foot-steps.”

Adding to the contemporary air of The Duchess of Malfi is the duchess’s refusal to be a brooding, dithering Hamlet-like creature and instead acts with zeal to fulfill her own desires for love and intimacy. And that flummoxes her venomous, misogynist brothers.

What makes the Brave Spirits production of The Duchess of Malfi riveting is the driving characterizations from a talented cast.

As the duchess, Katie Culligan is no shrill shrew even when her brothers are at their worst. Culligan gives her audacious duchess character a calm center covered by a boundless nature; visible sensuality, brave confidence, and yes, impetuousness, too. Even in the darkest of hours, this duchess shows little desperation, remaining noble even as her brothers and the world conspire against her.

As sniveling co-conspirators, Ian Blackwell Rogers portrays Ferdinand, the Duke of Calabria, and Steve Lebens plays his brother, a perverse, corrupt cardinal.

Rogers is at his best when in a deranged state of mind and emotionally over-the-top. His scenes featuring physical coarseness and psycho-social devastation are high points of a Grand Guignol performance style. He makes a deranged being come alive just a few feet from the audience. Yet he is not overwrought as he falls off the edge of sanity.

As the cardinal, Lebens cuts an arresting figure who wears the scarlet sash of his church high station with delight and even more pleasure when he takes it off to enjoy some amusement like butchery or carnal sex. Lebens intimidates with a commanding baritone voice full of menace and barbarous orders.

Then there is Bosola, a servant who is used by Ferdinand and the cardinal to befriend and spy on the duchess. Played by Rebecca Speas, Bosola follows orders expecting a pay-off of some kind. Too late, she finds a conscience and ponders how to take revenge for the distress she causes the duchess. As Bosola, Speas travels the most psychological distance in The Duchess of Malfi, wondering whether all that happens will “end in a little point, a kind of nothing.”

In other key roles, Jared Graham plays Antonio, the loving, compliant man the duchess loves and marries; Adrianne Knapp is the cardinal’s coyly seductive mistress who asks one question too many, and Musa Gurnis is the duchess’ loyal waiting woman.

The spare set is a utilitarian minimalist design that uses several doors and a trapdoor with theatrical effect.

The Duchess of Malfi is a full-throated shout against high crimes and misdemeanors and political corruption as well as a loud cry from the heart about the oppression of women who want to make their own choices and have their own agency.

The play can be appreciated for its lush language, as well as its ghastly acts of cruelty and insanity and its 400-year-old take on collusion. It was a tragedy written to incite, and the Brave Spirits production does just that.

Where and when: The Duchess of Malfi runs through Nov. 18 at The Lab at Convergence, 1819 N. Quaker Lane, Alexandria. Tickets can be purchased online.

This piece is based on a review in DC Metro Theater Arts.