Performance review: The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster

Abstract

This was more like a street brawl than a genteel or decorous fencing match. Clutching the dead prince, Horatio (Jonathan Livingstone) was given Fortinbras’s closing verdict: ‘he was likely, had he been put on, / To have proved most royally’ (5.2.351–2). Paradoxically, it was McKellen’s Windsor performance that could most easily justify that description. Jumbo’s was altogether something less fusty.