I much enjoyed the one-star review (The Times, £) of The Duchess of Malfi by Clive Davis, the paper’s theatre critic. The original was written by John Webster in 1612-13. The seemingly excruciating adaptation is the work of feminist writer-director Zinnie Harris. From her Wiki profile, all you need to know about her:

“Alongside her original plays, Zinnie Harris has adapted and reworked a number of plays from the western dramatic canon revising female characters from those plays for a more contemporary and sympathetic eye.

Among these adaptations, This Restless House (2017), Harris’ version of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, imagines Clytemnestra not as someone capable of murder, but as a woman more like herself with no intention to kill. Her play Macbeth (an undoing) (February 2022) revisits Lady Macbeth as a ‘complex woman intoxicated by love, power and maternal longing; a woman out of time, fighting against the constraints of medieval patriarchy.’

Similarly, in The Duchess (of Malfi), her adaptation of John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi, the duchess is given the final word as Webster’s text is rewoven to examine the control and violence of men towards women. In her version of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, Julie is a character with actions of those of a child who is scared of and has been coerced by her father.”

I posted the following comments:

“What a refreshing change to see a male critic panning a leading lady and a tediously ideological feminist writer-director. Bravo!!!”

Mike Buchanan

JUSTICE FOR MEN & BOYS

LAUGHING AT FEMINISTS”

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