Measure for Measure Reviews: Anna's Bits

I thought I'll gather together all reviews for the play which mention Anna's part as Isabella. 

(To see the full reviews you can click on the bold links)

The Stage wrote 

In the hands of the compellingly mercurial Anna Maxwell Martin - in her first major Shakespeare role - Isabella’s passionate, erotically charged arguments and outbursts of anger are punctuated with quiet moments of girlish nervousness. Gradually Maxwell Martin develops poise for Isabella, culminating in the withering gaze of incredulity with which she answers Vincentio’s clumsy proposal in Shakespeare’s rather tortuous denouement.

The Independent wrote

Presented with Anna Maxwell-Martin's stunning Isabella, he shrinks into himself and becomes a figure out of an Alan Ayckbourn farce. Preparing for their second meeting, he painfully and klutzily inserts contact lenses, so he can dispense with his unsightly specs, and scurries around haplessly, rearranging the room.

As performed by the great Maxwell Martin, Isabella is a mix of the kind of absolutist who is a demagogue waiting to happen (some of her blazing oratorical gestures make her look as if she has been schooled by political image consultants) and a residually pained, vulnerable human being. Having seized hectoring advantage of the situation, she winds up on Angelo's side of the desk before being pinned down on the same piece of furniture by this lustful little power-abuser.

The Jewish Chronicle wrote

The mesmerising Martin reveals Isabella's persuasive passion and compassion, but also a heart as stony as Angelo's when her brother Claudio begs her to pay the price for his life. Here Emun Elliott's Claudio unforgettably shifts from the suave seducer who got his girl pregnant to a carpet-chewing hysteric at the thought of his coming execution. 

CurtainUp Wrote

Anna Maxwell Martin's straitlaced Isabella has many clever arguments often kneeling as if praying to God while she asks for the life of her brother Claudio (Emun Elliott) to be spared after he has made his Juliet (Daisy Boulton) pregnant. Maxwell Martin's Isabella is at turns feisty, strong willed and even angry but never desperate enough to yield her virginity. As if to remind us as to her lack of interest in her sexuality, we first see Isabella in her no-nonsense underwear, a functional plain cream bra and waist slip, while another nun helps her put on the long black velvet dress she will wear throughout the production and of which Isabella will spend the first half hour in a displacement activity trying to do up the dozens of button loops on the sleeves.

Evening Standard wrote

Ben Miles is a fidgety, intense Duke — tightly drawn even in authoritative moments but also pithy and appealing. This is a finely controlled interpretation, discerning and nuanced. So too is Anna Maxwell Martin’s Isabella: her default setting is a kind of ceremonious severity but then she flares into quavering anxiety and frenzied argument, only to return to waxy composure.

Whats on Stage wrote

There’s an equally strong performance from Anna Maxwell Martin as one of the most dour Isabellas I’ve ever seen. With her hard-set face and black robes, there’s a real touch of religious fanatic about this performance...Kinnear and Maxwell Martin alone offer compelling reasons to catch it if you can.  

The Telegraph wrote

The scenes between Angelo and Isabella are always the drama’s highlight and I have never seen them better played than they are here. In his cheap suit and nerdy specs, Rory Kinnear’s Angelo is the embodiment of bloodless, meddling bureaucracy, and the character’s amazement, fear and unquenchable excitement as he finds himself perversely turned on by Isabella’s eloquent purity is thrillingly caught by Kinnear. This is a performance of precise, high-definition impact which suggests he could prove a stunning Hamlet at the NT later this year.

Anna Maxwell Martin, an actress whose appearance disconcertingly suggests both a grown woman and a stubborn, sulky child, powerfully captures the fierce intelligence, moral righteousness and disconcerting sexuality of Isabella, and the scene when Angelo bestrides her on the desk achieves explosive dramatic impact. 

The Guardian wrote

What attracts him to Anna Maxwell Martin's excellent Isabella is her single-minded moral purity. It is easy for the character to seem a prig in her refusal to exchange her virginity for her brother's survival.
But Maxwell Martin plays her as a mirror-image of Angelo: a fierce absolutist forced to wake up to new experience. Her cry of "more than our brother is our chastity" is delivered as a plea to heaven rather than a ringing assertion. She also agrees to the notorious bed trick with a haste born of innocence. And, in the final act, after she has sued for mercy for the fallen Angelo, they stare at each other as if realising theirs would be a natural union.