“There are some wonderfully creative, effective choices made in this production… But the choices are inconsistent and inexplicable.“
Kate Stratford
3 blood soaked daggers
Playhouse, Sydney Opera House
Sydney to 2nd April
Canberra Theatre Centre 14 – 22 April
Arts Centre Melbourne 27 April – 14 May 2023.
Here we are, back at the Scottish play, with director Peter Evans’ creatives and cast looking to make a fresh offering. A thick, heavy emerald velvet curtain, at pre-set, along with furry floor tiles sets us either in the 1980s or the 1920s. Anna Tregloan’s costumes set us right – we are in the 1920’s. Although how this design serves the play is a mystery. It seems to be merely an aesthetic rather than an interpretation.
The Weird Sisters emerge from the war, totally devoid of menace and sense of verse. They later battle it out in the infamous cauldron scene; listing the ingredients for a deadly incantation as though they are phoning through items on a shopping list. There is nothing supernatural or threatening and it is all just a little amusing. Lighting and haze effects attempt to evoke the otherworld but overreach causing less of the haunted Scottish moors feel and more Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind experience.
The ignoring of the rhythm and poetical essence of the script is rather pervasive, leading to some flat delivery and uninspiring speeches and characters. Shakespeare’s work throbs, literally, with the push-pull of blood and in Macbeth, where the imagery of blood is rife, delivery needs to explore and embed this flow of life.
There are some wonderfully creative, effective choices made in this production. It opens with characters littering the stage as corpses rather than exiting. But the choices are inconsistent and inexplicable. In Glamis castle, the characters form tableaux behind the action. Which often isn’t. Action, that is. Then Macbeth and Lady Macbeth push each other to kill Duncan by shouting across the space. One feels someone is about to stick their head in from another room and say “We can hear you, you know”. At times the production leans into imagination but then retreats.
As Macbeth, Hazem Shammas appears in a double-breasted grey suit seeming less the expected war hero and more like Dave from Accounting; whilst Jessica Tovey’s dress leaves an impression of a discount Princess Leia. They have the energy and physicality to push the play along but the petulance of the characterisation undermines their viciousness. Tovey’s Lady Macbeth is charmingly different at the beginning, but reverts to standard interpretation half-way through. Shammas’ Macbeth is a descent into madness more like Richard III or King Lear. What is missing here is that he is not scary. Ever. He shouts when attempting to terrify. The most terrifying people are low voiced, imperturbable and still.
This production seems more of a tragi-comedy. Director and cast have found humour beyond the Porter scene (origin of all knock-knock jokes), but it is humour we are awkward with. We are all used to the idea of Macbeth being the story of a good general corrupted by ambition and driven to a level of madness by PTSD (“full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife”) but a babbling maniac requires a willingness to be led there by the production. And we are not enticed to go there.
We await the “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow”. Thankfully, Shammas gives this the gravitas it demands. There should be a clash of the greats between Macbeth and Macduff but the final confrontation and fight lack conviction.
This is a play of familiar quotes and delicious poetry. And it is the most accessible of Shakespeare’s tragedies being that is a short play (for him) with a simple plot line and theme. Fair is foul and foul is fair. Nothing is as it seems. It is a treatise on ambition and guilt. On the acts of powerful men seeking to gain more and more power. Rarely are we, in life, ever given a glimpse of remorse for the cruelty such men inflict. It is also very much an action play, so to often have characters moving in slow motion seems a little baffling. No doubt a meaningful choice but if the audience don’t get it, they just don’t get it.
Kate Stratford, Theatre Now
