MACBETH. To 11 February.

London

MACBETH
by William Shakespeare

Southwark Playhouse 62 Southwark Bridge Road SE1 To 11 February 2006
2, 8-9 Feb 10am, 2-3, 6-10 Feb 2pm 3-4, 10-11 Feb 7.30pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS: 08700 601761
www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 January

Short, sharp clarity is this production’s strong point.
Thanks to sponsorship from companies (listed below), Southwark Playhouse can offer free seats for Shakespeare to 1,200 local primary and secondary school pupils. Beside the many resulting matinees there are end-of-week evening performances and Andy Brereton’s production, if not the most subtly acted, is clear and intelligent, both Christopher Bowen’s Macbeth and Sarah Groarke’s Lady Macbeth conveying clear understanding of their characters’ development.

Performed in a tight space between 2 banks of audience, Macbeth’s interest in the Weird Sisters (here, literally, 2 sisters and a brother) shows as he drags their attention from telling Banquo’s fortune – “tell me more” he insists. His emphasis on the negative at “To know my deed, ‘twere best not know myself” is predictive as Bowen later shows a carcase increasingly detached from any inner being.

Macbeth’s soon convinces himself Banquo brings his death on himself. Increasingly there’s a sarcastic roughness to his speech, echoing his coarsened self-certainty and leading inevitably to the morally dead figure who seems to brush away with his sword the “false Thanes (again, others’ fault) who desert him.

His degrees of reaction to the predictions, from knowing he’s Thane of Glamis, to amazement at the prophecy of kingship is reflected in Lady Macbeth’s response to his report of the meeting. And Groarke shows the extra passion in Lady Macbeth, her assertion adopted to embolden him, which collapses by her final sleepwalking appearance. The vocal emphasis talking about the murdered Lady Macduff (“The Thane of Fife had a wife; where is she now?”) suggests a mind that’s accounted rationally for the crimes flowing from their first murder and been overwhelmed by the flood.

There are limitations. Some inevitable cross-gender casting takes away from the early battle’s reality; it’s condescending suddenly to introduce a Scottish accent for the Porter, and while cutting the killing of Macduffs’ family (following Northern Broadsides’ example) means the news comes fresh to us as to Macduff in England, this with severe abridgement of the England scene makes for a jump-cut in the action’s emotional flow. But its clarity with the Macbeths makes Brereton’s Southwark Shakespeare a fascinating affair.

Macbeth: Christopher Bowen
Malcolm/Witch: Ryan Coath
Banquo/Old Siward: Andy Crabb
Lady Macbeth: Sarah Groarke
Duncan/Macduff: Justin McCarron
Witch/Ross: Louise Shuttleworth
Witch/Porter: Katherine Toy

Director: Andy Brereton
Lighting: Lawrence T Doyle
Musical Director: Janie Armour
Costume: Julie Wood
Fight director: Paul Benzing

Sponsors: Better Bankside, Southwark Council, PricewaterhouseCoopers. Credit Suisse, Equity

2006-02-02 09:11:21