PRINCIPAL CAST: Daniel Massey (Duke Vincentio); Paul Mooney (Claudio); Peggy Mount (Mistress Overdone); David Schofield (Angelo); Juliet Stevenson (Isabella).

This production had its original press night on 4 October 1983 in Stratford-upon-Avon, before transferring to the Barbican in 1984.

Alphonsia Emmanuel performed only during the Stratford run of this production.

"The play opens magnificently with Bob Crowley's shifting opulence providing a setting of melancholy splendour for the duke's court. Voice of boy sopranos soar in elegiac strain and the notion that a great state is being handed over to subtle corruption is beautifully suggested." ~ Richard Edmonds, "Measure for Measure", Birmingham Post, 5 October 1983

"The play is set in a mysteriously lurid 18th century Vienna. The sets, by Bob Crowley, are dominated by an eye-catching campanile, a spiral staircase, and other fascinating and useful oddities. The action gets off to a fine start with Daniel Massey's imposing Duke, a haunted other-worldly recluse who spies on the events throughout." ~ John Barber, "Measure for Measure", Daily Telegraph, 6 October 1983

"From our first glimpse of the Duke signing decrees in his darkling Viennese court and then preening himself in front of a vast mirror as he dons a rich, black-velvet coat, we get a feeling of heremetic opulance that has excluded the turbulent outside world. And that violent disorder is quickly evoked through a tableau of a Rake's Progress stew where young bucks nibble the knees of poxy Hogarthian whores." ~ Michael Billington, "Measure for Measure", The Guardian, 6 October 1983