ometimes the pressure of reinventing classics makes theater directors forget the importance of connecting the audience with the original text. Director Sarah Shippobotham has tried not to do this in Babcock Theatre’s upcoming production of John Webster’s “The Duchess of Malfi,” which opens next Wednesday.

“It’s a verse play that’s driven by language. People are not used to listening to language like that when it goes on for that long,” said Shippobotham, the head of the University of Utah’s Actor Training Program.

John Webster’s 400-year-old classic exemplifies the Jacobian writer’s stark outlook on humankind’s negative qualities and suffering. Along with “The White Devil,” it is considered one of Webster’s strongest pieces. The play centers around a widowed duchess who defies her brothers’ forbiddance and remarries her Steward in a passionate romance. The true story has a tragic urgency to it as a spy arrives and things become disastrous. Shippobotham has tried to get the audience involved in the rarely performed Jacobian theater by rearranging the small Babcock Theatre into a thrust stage, which brings the audience into the story by seating on three sides of the stage. “The first few rows are right in the action, so people can’t feel like they’re watching a film,” she said.

“The words have less imagery than Shakespeare. It’s hard to ask people to sit and listen to a lot of words that need some sorting out and some time,” she said, describing the difficulty of making the play exciting and understandable.

Shippobotham’s biggest challenge in her production developed from her desire to keep things lively. She cast two actresses, Cheryl Nichols and Heidi Hertford, in the title role on rotating nights. “We have an awful lot of strong female actors. To do a play like ‘The Duchess of Malfi,’ I felt it was important to have two actresses play the part for five nights instead of one actress having 10 performances,” Shippobotham said. “I let Heidi and Cheryl run free with their interpretations.”

According to Shippobotham, the challenge in giving such a complex role to two different actresses is that the supporting actors have to adjust to the main performance. “The actors are never quite sure what one night will be from the next…You could almost see it twice and feel as if you were watching a different play.”

Shippobotham envisioned this challenge from the beginning. “It was never my wish that they would have to be the same,” Shippobotham said. “It’s meant that we’ve had to rehearse a lot of the scenes twice and both Duchesses have had slightly fewer rehearsals.”

The actors have to constantly be involved with complicated language and having the correct emotional responses to the title character. Shippobotham saw her opportunity as a good way to coach the student actors in difficult material. “The set, costumes and lights are wonderful, but the talking is really important,” she said. “The most interesting part of the whole process was working on making sure that the words come to life. It’s a quite verbose text and we’ve made it as active as possible.”

With any success, “The Duchess of Malfi” will turn a new audience onto Webster’s work.

“The Duchess of Malfi” runs April 7-11 and April 15-18 at the Babcock Theatre. Tickets are $12 general admission and $6 for students. Tickets can be purchased in advance at the Kingsbury Hall Ticket Office at 581-7100, the Union at 581-5888 or ArtTix outlets at 355-ARTS (2787).For more information call 581-6448.
jeremy@red-mag.com