Brush up your Shakespeare

I have an almost fatal risk gene in my makeup. It seemed folly to take this on having never read or seen the play. But soon I was sharing the director's enthusiasm measure for measure

award There must be generations of people who, like George Bernard Shaw, loathed Shakespeare so much they would like to dig him up and throw stones at him. Yet never have there been so many attempts to make him popular and approachable. Google has 25 pages of Shakespeare for children links alone - though ignore the one to Shakespeare Fishing Tackle, which seems to be a distributor for children's fishing poles.

So it was somewhat wryly that I went along for an interview with Chris Grace, whose Shakespeare Schools Festival has the glorious aim of celebrating Shakespeare's birthday with 24-hour youth performances all round the world. It is also linked to the Olympics, both this year and four years on, culminating in 2012 when the Games come to London, the plays being handed on like the Olympic flame - if they're still handing it on in 2012. Chris approached a number of writers to condense the plays to 45 minutes, which fits nicely into a school timetable and which they hoped would encourage teachers and the young to get involved. Would I abridge Measure for Measure, they asked?

I have an almost fatal risk gene in my makeup. It seemed folly to take this on, having never read nor seen the play, but Grace's enthusiasm was infectious and soon I was sharing it with equal measure; pun entirely appropriate, the meaning of the title being the first thing I went off to research.

It's the Bible

Another gene defect - my congenital atheism - links into my wondering why the Bible isn't taught as part of our cultural heritage, rather than being confined to its role as the Word of God. Why isn't it as vital a reference tool as the Oxford English Dictionary? How can anyone study English literature, or indeed western civilisation, without a knowledge of the Bible and the Greek myths? Recently, on Desert Island Discs, Tariq Ali said he would take Shakespeare's plays to the island, but not the Bible. I wondered if he might miss knowing that Measure for Measure refers to the Sermon on the Mount when Jesus said: "Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged, and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again", though Shakespeare has his own take on the matter.

A very moral magistrate

The former New York governor Eliot Spitzer might not know that reference, either in the Bible or in Measure for Measure. But never was there a more instant example of an Angelo, the magistrate given the task of restoring morality in a corrupt and scandalous capital. Going about it with extraordinary zeal, he is brought down - as are so many - by power and sex. Citizens are hauled off to prison for moral turpitude while he seeks to blackmail and seduce Isabella, a young virgin: her pure body for the life of her brother. Never was there a more apt scenario to capture the minds of the young actors of the National Youth Theatre, who were to perform my abridgement.

A girls' school teacher said that the greatest difficulty her A-level students had with the play was Isabella. Why couldn't she just sleep with Angelo, if it meant saving her brother's life? In largely secular Britain, words such as "honour"or "soul" have lost much meaning. Pondering on a contemporary equivalent, I suggested an Islamic slant.

Watching the suicide video of the London bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan tenderly, yet with complete certainty, telling his six-month-old daughter why he was going to his death and committing her future to Allah, perfectly illustrated this total religious belief. Isabella in a hijab and Angelo as a kind of Taliban imam would demonstrate Isabella's religious faith and Angelo's fall from puritanism to lust rather well. The director went for a striking Balkan look which had the NYT actors completely identifying with Isabella, as I had hoped.

Mohammad Sidique Khan obviously never experienced doubt, as Isabella's brother, Claudio, did 400 years earlier: "Ay, but to die, and go we know not where."

Jamila Gavin won the Whitbread Prize for her children's novel "Coram Boy", and abridged "Measure for Measure" for the National Youth Theatre

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