At Volcano Theatre |
| Volcano Theatre company- Macbeth, The Director's Cut , Project Space Upstairs, Dublin , October 1, 2000 |
| 'Macbeth: Director’s Cut’ is full of sound and fury: what does it signify? Volcano Theatre’s production is also full of smoke, image, and chaos. It does indeed cut to the chase, and takes us selectively through the Scottish play on a road paved solely with the crime of Macbeth, his Lady’s complicity, and their descent into madness. If Macbeth has murdered sleep, then this is the ensuing nightmare. This production is the antithesis of the RSC’s ‘Hamlet’; it’s post-modernity takes the text and renders it unfamiliar in its fragmentation and its physicalisation. Two actors move through the piece, not so much as ballet dancers in a pas de deux as much as two prize fighters, struggling for primacy. Lady Macbeth is foregrounded— in conventional productions, she often seems a mere goad to her husband. Here, she is as major a player as himself. While it is always clear that it is she who is of the necessary mettle and ambition to heartlessly do the murder of Duncan, here she is even more active, more invested, and perhaps even more to blame. Their relationship is eroticised to the degree that one assumes that the murder is the natural outgrowth of their dark, physical love play. It seems to be the only course left to them, as if their sexuality is almost used up and requires a dark deed to keep the passion alive. And they are passionate: the performer’s bodies cut through space, clasp onto to one another, hurl each other about, writhe on the floor. Their energy is overwhelming, and their total commitment to the work keeps one engaged, even through moments which seem impenetrable and oblique. There is a feeling of safety when recognisable bits of the text are staged— it is an interesting contrast to the movements of the play in which one feels totally at sea. Taken as such, it feels like appropriate manipulation of our perceptions and preconceptions of what a staging of this piece should be; it challenges the audience to give itself up to madness, and to be overwhelmed by the insanity of this misguided pair. Video is employed in a hit-and-miss manner: while many of the images are beautiful, and many are stunning in their conceptual application, the remainder of the clips are so conceptual as to elude understanding. The simplicity of the initial stage setting— a lush red curtain set on the diagonal, a coffin-like set piece, a candle— gives way to a chaotic, sloppy, crowded area which represents their private space. Its disorder symbolises the destruction of the sanity of the two, and becomes the larger battleground on which they battle their demons, and each other. The disorder of their house also stands in for the derangement of their collective psyche, as it does in dreams. And the apparent disorder of the piece belies the precise approach that physical theatre demands. ‘Macbeth: Director’s Cut’ signifies in that it renders the play’s subtext as its own entity, and creates the stage upon which its poor players strut and fret, oftentimes free of words, but never free of deed. |
Reviewed by: Susan Conley |
This review has been read 3567 times There are 31 other reviews of productions with this title in our database:
|
