ANYONE planning to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's production of Measure for Measure this season should acquaint themselves with the story beforehand.

For although it can be summed up in just a few paragraphs, the play is slow to get to the point.

It starts well enough - a lively station scene from which Duke Vincentio (Paul Higgins) departs Vienna, leaving the city to his deputy, Angelo (Daniel Evans).

But it loses pace immediately and as Angelo revives the city's stringent laws sentencing Claudio (Fergus O'Donnell) to death for getting his fiance Juliet (Shereen Ibrahim) pregnant, the poorly portrayed characters fail to convince.

Emma Fielding plays the novice nun Isabella, Claudio's sister, whose task is to plead for his release.

Angelo agrees if Isabella sleeps with him, but instead his ex-fiancee Mariana (Lisa Stevenson) takes her place in bed.

The execution scene is well done, despite the gratuitous nudity of Barnadine (Bill Nash), with its cold and eerie lighting and just enough suggestion of the gruesome act.

The duke, of course, has been in hiding in a monastery throughout, and plotting to foil Angelo's plans. It all comes together eventually, but the play does not measure up to the company's usual standards.

Measure for Measure is directed by Sean Holmes and runs at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre until November.

Anne Tugwell