By Lewis Goodall
One and all, welcome to Macbeth – Cluedo style. Yes indeed, when watching this Macbeth I could never quite escape the feeling that I was an unhappy victim of one of those unfortunate murder mystery weekends. All characters clad in rather exquisite evening gear, the slightly dodgy ‘Murder She Wrote’ music, and the altogether camp performances. Still, at least it’s a new take on a story everyone knows, a story of love, revenge, deceit and delicious duplicity.
The play starts as it means to go on – slightly bizarrely. Everyone’s favourite three witches look more like this year’s Russian Eurovision entry than the ghoulish sisters we’re all so familiar with. The director Will Cudmore has kept the play as fast paced and edgy as possible, but with hefty dialogue pruning as the inevitable consequence. The witches’ famous ‘double, double toil and trouble’ line mercilessly cut among others. Still, the merits of such pruning include keeping the play mercifully pithy but part of me still felt robbed.
However, as we all know, we don’t go to Macbeth for the Witches. We don’t go for Duncan or Lennox or Banquo, or any of the cornucopias of other minor characters who are altogether uninteresting. We go for Macbeth, Lady Macbeth and their enduringly fascinating relationship. In Cudmore’s production though, I feel we were served a decidedly unbalanced relationship. Ed Chalk gives a stellar performance as the unhinged Macbeth (albeit it seems that either Cudmore or Chalk equate deteriorating mental stability with increasing campness), he moves from a slick power-player to a gibbering Mika seamlessly. I am sad to say however that his power is not matched by his Queen, Anna Popplewell (of Narnia fame) as that consummate politician, Lady Macbeth. For most of the play, Popplewell exudes a sense of dramatic apathy, a sense of being slightly uncomfortable in Lady Macbeth’s shoes. Popplewell, fine actress though she may be, was overshadowed by Chalk, which credit to him though it may be, goes against the grain of the play, where Macbeth is the manipulated, the controlled, the used. I’m not sure the audience got that impression here.
Still, I’m at risk of being overly harsh. The adaptation is a fundamentally good one, with some production problems. For example, Mr Cudmore, enough with the smoke! We get it, it’s a murky situation, it’s Scotland, it’s foggy, it’s in the past. But there’s a line. And I think when the audience can only see the floating heads of the actors that line has been well and truly crossed.
Having said this, it’s well worth a visit. It’s fast paced and at times genuinely quite exciting (watch out for the fighting scenes, Jackie Chan eat your heart out) with some top quality performances. If nothing else go for the old-Etonian interpretation of Duncan, complete with sash, Herfordshire drawl and Patrick Moore squint. If that’s not worth a fiver, then I don’t know what it is.
Macbeth runs at the OFS Studio through the end of the week at 7:30 PM, with a Saturday 2:30 matinee.
