These are the confounding questions of Shakespeare’s challenging Measure for Measure. Known by scholars as one of the Bard’s “problem plays” because it is difficult to classify by genre, Measure examines the complexity, fallibility, and relativity of the practice of passing judgement, and its resolutions are, eerily, both happy and troubling. This under-performed but fascinating play is on stage at The Theater at Monmouth, under the direction of Jeri Pitcher.

To get a better view of Vienna’s corrupt underbelly, the concerned Duke (R. Chris Reeder) leaves his judicial duties in the hands of his deputy Angelo (Mark S. Cartier) and secretly goes undercover. Disguised as a friar, the Duke mingles with law-breakers and -makers, observing how justice is meted out. The quandary of the day concerns young noble Claudio (Dustin Tucker):

Because he has gotten his betrothed with child, Claudio has been sentenced to death for fornication. He and Juliet (Miranda Libkin) are deeply in love and married in all but the legal sense, but none of that matters to Angelo, a hard-ass adherent to the letter of the law. Claudio entreats his sister Isabella (Anna Soloway), who is about to become a nun, to plead with Angelo. At first, the acting justice denies her, but is then shocked to find himself lusting after her chastity. He proposes a little quid pro quo, and on this prospect hangs the rest of the story.

As you might suspect, Angelo is a complicated character, with a range of self-contradictions. Cartier expresses most of Angelo’s qualities with acuity and an appealing economy of style. He does fine work in relating Angelo’s rigidity and disdain, his bafflement at his feelings for Isabella, his brief frailty in the wake of her refusal, and his subsequent rage. What his portrayal lacks is a fuller expression of that sudden and bewildering lust that sets so much in motion. Cartier’s work is beautiful as we see Angelo’s disconcerted reaction to his lust, as he talks himself up to acting on it, and as he propositions Isabella, but that initial surge of ardor needs more visceral heat.

In the magnificent Soloway’s hands, Isabella’s moral strength is nuanced but powerful, visibly confounding and devastating Angelo. As Claudio, the poor regular guy whose head is at the center of all this, Tucker has great range, moving in and out of both high drama and comedy, and has an uncommon ability to make Shakespeare’s language feel like our own.

In Price's hands, Lucio, Claudio’s rascally friend, is a big source of comic relief and the unabashed banter of moral equivocation. As the Duke, lurking about in a cowl, Reeder conveys well a searching earnestness, although there’s something a little too soft-focus about him — he could use a sharper dose of nobility in his bearing.

As usual, Monmouth’s production is stellar, and Clinton O’Dell, particularly, enhances the characters with aptly luxurious costumes — Angelo in coal and copper against Isabella’s immaculate all-white habit; Claudio in blood-rust red and black leather, with his swollen lady wearing the same red dyed in swirls into pale fabric, calling to mind afterbirth or murder.

And which are we dealing with as Measure wraps up — the birth of a more natural morality, or a scary ambiguousness in how power is wielded? No one has been offed by the end, but the conclusion’s pairing-off of couples is strangely unsettling, particularly when the Duke, out of disguise again, asks for Isabella’s hand. Her response is not scripted but is generally treated as acquiescence, and productions of Measure hang on the director’s interpretation of this moment. Pitcher’s choice and Soloway’s superb performance make it the most profound and disturbing moment in the show; this thirty seconds alone is worth the price of admission. We look Isabella’s fear, resignation, and bitterness full in the face, and see there a painful understanding of how even the best power operates.

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Megan Grumbling: mgrumbling@hotmail.com