Theatre review: The Duchess [of Malfi], Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh
JOHN Webster’s Duchess of Malfi is a play about woman who tries to live her own life, according to her own passions, and is savagely punished for it by the violent patriarchal society around her; and although it was first seen in 1614, there is something about the pattern of misogyny, paranoia and fierce controlling behaviour traced out in Webster’s plot that remains sickeningly familiar, more than 400 years on.