Review: The Scottish one

Macbeth
Bell Shakespeare
8 June 2012
Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 23 June
bellshakespeare.com.au

I have a confession to make: I've never read the Scottish play and, somehow, I've never seen a production. Shame on me, but it left me in an unusual position of being able to see if the Bell Shakespeare production really tells the story. All I knew was it's the one about the power mad couple and witches, and, being a Shakespeare tragedy, most people die.

It's unusual to see a professional telling of Shakespeare that doesn't assume a basic knowledge of the text and focuses its telling on interpretation and originality.

The most comprehensive interpretation of the text is Anna Cordingly's design that feels like a slab of cold rough Scottish highlands, where cardigans are a must, with a mirror ceiling that brings the magic and threat into the world the Macbeths think they can control. And Kate Mulvany's lady Macbeth is the most complex and fascinating person in it.

Peter Evans direction brings some original moments (I'm not THAT unfamiliar with it), but it's almost monotone, even Dan Speilman's Macbeth. Our beloved Bard wrote the best stories ever, but if he were writing today, it'd be suggested that he get more of the action onstage and maybe spend a bit less time in the character's heads. Shakespeare tellings that sing are directed like a piece of music is conducted. The dense and difficult text is beautiful to read, but it can't be relied on to tell the story on a stage. Shakespeare is about tone and rhythm and dissonance; it's like opera without the music.

It's clear that the terrific cast have worked on the nitty gritty of their characters (and probably improvised Macbeth and Banquo at the pub toasting Fleance's birth at the pub), but this production loses the vastness of the overall picture and the telling of the story is flat.

Come interval, I had to read the synopsis and ask who was the dude in the blue jumper with the beard. It was Malcolm, and I thought Fleance was a witch.

Review: A Golem Story

A Golem Story
Malthouse Theatre
17 June 2011
Merlyn Theatre
www.malthousetheatre.com.au

I don't want a year without a new play by Lally Katz. Until now, her addictive black writing has usually left me in tears of laughter, but she has bounded into new ground with A Golem Story: an exquisite exploration about the place of God and the sacred in our lives.

In Prague in 1580, Ahava (Yael Stone) wakes up in a Synagogue with a disjointed memory of her dead husband and believes his Dybbuk (spirit) has passed into her. The Rabbi  (Katz favourite, Brian Lipson) invites her to stay, but his student Amos (Dan Speilman) fears her, especially when the Rabbi asks her to help make a Golem that can protect the local Jews and stop local children from being killed.  Meanwhile, the Christian guard (Greg Stone) will go to any length to prove that the blood of Christ is enough for him, but his Emperor (Mark Jones) is willing to share an apple with Jew.

Drawing on Jewish culture and with live music led by Cantor Michel Laloum, director Michael Kantor reveals his heart and soul in this work. I've often felt distanced by Kantor's work, where I could see the intent and the creativity, but never felt for the world or the characters. God sits in the heart of this world. Each character sees him/her/it as something different, but each yearns for the deep comfort that sacred beliefs bring. It's not a Jew versus Christian tale, but it uses these two great faiths to let us examine where we'd be if the space filled by what we hold scared became empty.

The outstanding cast clearly draw on their own beliefs to bring the contractions of fear and faith, secular and sacred, and God and human to each character, who are all struggling to make decisions that will bring God closer to their lives.

Designers Anna Cordingley (costume and set) and Paul Jackson (lighting) create this world with a combination of the warm darkness of 16th century Prague and the coldness of clean contemporary light. I've found Cordingley's designs distracting in the past, but her distinct sense of detail and remarkable aesthetic support every element of the script and I can't imagine one without the other. Jackson's use of burning candles and electric light is stunning and his light-only Golem evokes a fascinating contradiction of fear and love. I know I say it every time, but there isn't a lighting designer in this town who comes near to Jackson.

A Golem Story retains Katz's gorgeously unique voice, but it doesn't rely on humour to create emotion. By losing the comfortable buffer of laughs, her characters are left more emotionally vulnerable and we have no choice but to feel with them. This is beautiful, emotive writing and evidence that this wonderful writer is going to be one of our unforgettable playwrights.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.

Knives in Hens

Knives in Hens
5 August 2009
Malthouse Theatre
Beckett Theatre, CUB Malthouse

Anyone who knows David Harrower’s remarkable Blackbird, will be eager to see his Olivier Award winning Knives in Hens, written in 1995. This co-production by Malthouse Theatre and the State Theatre of South Australia is almost mesmerising, but gets lost in its interpretation

Anna Cordingley’s design strikes before a word is spoken, as she continues to prove her stunning visual aesthetic. We are at the end of huge drain in a world coloured by rust and moss and mud. The circles and water give lighting genius Paul Jackson a canvas that rarely disappoints our eyes – but this beautiful, beautiful design works against the text. I loved how Cordingley’s recent design for Happy Days created an incongruous gap between the text and the design, but here its dissonance is confusing and frustrating.

The huge concrete pipe with the rural-looking costumes and straightforward language of the text immediately establishes a post-now, post-apocalyptic world, as it’s a society that has created giant drains big enough for an industrial city and probably destroyed itself. Suggesting an unknown future, as an audience who know how to read stage language, we search for clues about this world - that aren’t there. In the program, Cordingley says, “The opportunities in the drain pipe offered up for Paul’s lighting and Geordie’s (Brookman – director) physical blocking were instantly compelling.” Which they are, but how does this help to tell the story and share this text?

Harrower’s text is full of metaphors and his magnificent words summon vivid visions of a rural landscape and its struggling people. As productions all over the world have proven, the dense text never restricts the creators in their interpretation, but nothing else in this production is congruous with the giant drain, so the text and the stage worlds never become one.

For all the wonderful things about Knives in Hens, it is a confusing experience. Kate Box, Robert Menzies and Dan Spielman’s performances are individually perfect, but they don’t acknowledge the world they are living in, be it moving through the water the same as they move on solid ground, letting us believe that they can see a village at the other end of the pipe or creating a relationship subtext between the characters.

This could be because Brookman’s direction is felt too much on the stage, from ‘compelling’ blocking that doesn’t always sit with the text to performance levels that restrict the performers. They start so intensely that importance becomes meaningless because they have nowhere to go. There’s a constant tension and we feel and hear a lot of powerful emotion, but it lacks light and shade, and is so relentless that there isn’t enough room for the text to speak.

This production feels like it is trying so hard to bring an originality and a theatrical intelligence to the script, that it forgets to trust the script and forgets to tell the story to the audience. As it runs, it may forget about trying to be so clever and relax enough to let the story free. And, if they can make that drain a vital part of the telling, it may still be seen as one of the best designs of the year.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.