IN the spartan and, frankly, chilly vault of the semi-converted
Dowanhill church, nine girls writhed like serpents in a circus ring
filled with bark and bones. From a minstrels' gallery a string and wind
ensemble struggled to be heard above a Hammeresque organ. Unfortunately
for musical director Ralph Haggerty, the memorable music of this
production was to be the hisses and cackles of the triple cast of
witches.
It could easily have been otherwise, but this device -- surely
prompted partly by director Mary McCluskey's need to create as many
parts as possible for the participants in Scottish Youth Theatre's
summer festival -- proved thrice as menacing. These witches were
omnipresent, literally never off-stage and controlling each step of the
action.
They echoed the lines of some characters, commented -- from a position
of superior knowledge -- on the utterances of others. They answered
rhetorical questions and led the audience in the required responses.
When Macbeth tells his wife: ''We'll proceed no further with this
business,'' they gave a chorus of ''Aw'' -- and got away with it.
They were utterly mesmeric and they completely skewed the whole play.
Small wonder David Walker -- a Macbeth you warmed to and even felt sorry
for -- gulped at his soliloquies; there was no room for ''vaulting
ambition'' here. This production is an unequal contest between the
principals and the forces of the supernatural. The mere mortals never
stood a chance.
Only Kananu Kirimi's Lady Macbeth lasted a couple of rounds and that
was as much because she is an ally shoving her husband in the same
direction as through her strong performance. By the time of the
sleepwalking scene even she was beaten.
It's daft at the fag-end of the twentieth century to complain about
tampering with the bard, and SYT have every reason to be proud of this
production, both in its realisation and many of the performances. But it
was only half a Macbeth.
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