Portrait of a psycho as comic as it is chilling
Charles Spencer reviews The Jew of Malta, at the Almeida, N1
Tuesday 5 October 1999
Electronic Telegraph
Has there ever been a funnier account of a psychopathic killer than The Jew of Malta (circa 1589)? The play was billed as a "famous tragedy" on first publication, and the body-count is high even by the bloodthirsty standards of the age. A whole nunnery gets its quietus here, courtesy of a poisoned rice pudding.
But as that last, typically Marlovian detail suggests, this is not a work that arouses pity or terror. Instead it provokes loud bursts of discomfited laughter. It is black comedy at its best, with Christopher Marlowe anticipating Joe Orton by four centuries. Both men were briefly imprisoned, both were homosexual, both met violent early deaths, and both had an irresistible urge to cause outrage.
What's interesting is that Orton's plays now seem safe, and slightly dated. He is the licensed jester of the Swinging Sixties. In contrast, Marlowe remains a deeply troubling and enigmatic figure, with much more than a touch of the night about him.
Daniel Johnson argued on these pages this week that this is the most anti-Semitic play in English, and one calculated to offend today's bland, Blairite sensibilities. Yet the great thing about Marlowe is that he was eager to offend everyone.
The play's Christians are repulsive hypocrites on the make, and the evening's most outrageously funny line comes from a plump friar, bitterly lamenting the fact that he hasn't had a chance to take the virginity of the heroine, whose death-bed confession he has just heard.
What's more, I suspect that throughout the play's history, even the most ferociously anti-Semitic have found themselves warming to the character of Barabas the Jew. As with Richard III, as with Hannibal Lecter, there is something damnably attractive about the sheer vitality and ingenuity of his evil. No one knew more than Marlowe about the allure of the forbidden.
With his diminutive stature and foxily disreputable appearance, Ian McDiarmid is never going to be a heroic actor, but I can think of few who can command a stage more compellingly or entertainingly. As Barabas he delivers long knotty speeches with wit and precision, and his incredulous outrage, guttural accent and spot-on timing often put me in mind of the great Jewish stand-up Jackie Mason.
There are some great tours de force here, most notably when Barabas outlines his past atrocites with all the smug satisfaction of a bore down the pub describing the swanky features on his new car. Yet McDiarmid has the capacity to chill as well as amuse. There's a brilliant scene when, gazing at the audience as he hugs his daughter, you see the precise, almost mystical moment when he wills himself to complete evil ("I'll rouse my senses and awake myself"). And though much of his performance is played with an irresistible joviality (at times he actually dances for sheer joy at his own daring) there are moments when the voice suddenly goes dead and the eyes go disconcertingly blank, and you find yourself shivering in the presence of a psycho.
Inevitably, many of the supporting characters seem drab in comparison. David Yelland, though, is memorably vile as the morally odious, sanctimonious governor of Malta, Adam Levy has a sexy allure as Barabas's serviceable slave, Ithamore, and the lugubrious Robert Demeger is hilarious as a much abused friar. Poppy Miller however could make much more of Barabas's cruelly abused daughter, Abigail, potentially a richer and more poignant role than Jessica in The Merchant of Venice.
Michael Grandages's fleet production captures the play's hurtling energy, and Christopher Oram contributes a satisfyingly solid walled-courtyard design. Incidentally, keep your eyes peeled at the end: the last glimpse of Barabas offers a final flourish of bad-taste bravura that Marlowe himself would have relished.
Tickets: 0171 359 4404
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