“The Duchess of Malfi”, Bard in the Botanics, Glasgow

Mark Brown on Clydeside
★★★★☆
28 July 2026 

Bard in the Botanics (BiB) – Glasgow’s mini-festival of Shakespeare and other classic authors – ends its twenty-fifth anniversary season on 1 August with this fine production of The Duchess of Malfi, by Shakespeare’s contemporary John Webster, and a very creditable adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. They follow on from strong productions of Othello and Twelfth Night.

Adam Donaldson and Rebecca Robin.
Photo credit: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan.

Respect is due to both Gordon Barr, the festival’s artistic director, and his associate director Jennifer Dick for their excellent stewardship of what is an under-resourced, yet consistently impressive showcase. Indeed, Dick should be lauded for her considerable body of work in adapting and truncating classic texts for BiB.

None more so than this powerfully condensed version of Webster’s bloody opus. Playing at well short of two hours, with just five core characters (reduced from an original dramatis personae of 15, plus supporting roles), this is a brilliantly abbreviated telling of the tale of the titular young widow and her defiant marriage to her steward, Antonio Bologna.

Convincingly costumed by designer Heather Grace Currie, the piece plays (as ever in BiB’s productions in the Botanic Gardens’ beautiful Victorian glasshouse, the Kibble Palace) in close proximity to the audience. Rebecca Robin renders the eponymous Italian aristocrat as a strong-willed, witty proto-feminist.

Her Duchess is like a proverbial unstoppable force who finds herself crashing into not one, but two immovable objects (as manifested by her viciously greedy and misogynistic brothers). Stephen Arden plays the elder brother, the Cardinal of Aragon, as the very picture of Catholic degeneracy (drawing accurately on a portrayal that would have been more than acceptable to the repressively Protestant rulers of Jacobean England).

If Arden’s cleric has a cynical, indeed murderous, disregard for Christian morality, Adam Donaldson’s Ferdinand (twin brother to the Duchess) is marvellously odious, not least in his moments of disquieting incestuousness. Manasa Tagica gives a strong performance as the brothers’ quarry – Antonio – who shifts credibly between bouts of chivalric heroism, terror and sober practicality.

Negotiating her disreputable, induced and intimidated way through all of these proceedings is Claire Macallister’s compelling Daniella de Bosola (a feminised Daniel de Bosola, the Duchess’s specifically titled “Master of the Horse”). Providing – under promise and duress – services of espionage and violence for Ferdinand, the actor succeeds in rendering her character one who garners both loathing and sympathy.

Cut to the kernel of this dark tragedy, Dick’s staging is a work of bleak poetics, grim sexuality and visceral brutality. Which, one suspects, would have met with Webster’s approval.

Until 1 August: bardinthebotanics.co.uk