It’s vintage Macbeth magic – up to a point
New Zealand’s Barden Party is yet another “phoenix” stage company rising from the ashes of lockdown, writes Bruce Whitehead.
Under one of the world’s strictest public distancing regimes – you don’t mess with ex-PM Jacinda Ardern – something had to give. The Bard of Stratford-upon-Avon beckoned the players to “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”... and the rest is history.
Barden Party pledge to “transform backyards into vintage magic”. Well, up to a point; vintage Shakespeare doesn’t immediately suggest a bluegrass musical setting – but hey! It was Covid, right?
Staging Shakespeare “in the round” does guarantee audience immersion, if not actual participation; that would have stretched the anarchic bawdy style too far. Instead they opened with a slew of knowing jokes to break the ice, with a LOT of very loud shouting and singing. Gender was thrown to the winds with every role up for grabs, and quite right too. Unfortunately Queen Duncan doesn’t get very long onstage, but her actor returned in several other roles.
I’ve often thought Shakespeare gets away with a lot in setting up this imperfect regicide; the guilty couple’s overnight descent into homicidal conspiracy seems implausibly quick – and this was stripped down even more. But drama implies a suspension of belief, and surely The Scottish Play gets a bit of dramatic licence? More important are the moral choices at stake. I reflected on the morality play underway in Alaska; have Putin or Trump ever seen Macbeth, I wondered.
The knockabout style belied an often deep pathos in the acting, such as MacDuff’s homecoming to horrific slaughter. But occasionally the passion got too much, and one scene featuring the show’s director Laura Irish, as Queen Macbeth, teetered on over-acting. The drama felt inspiring and I wished my son, who’s just started high school, was there. The production could easily ditch the F-bombs which are definitely not in the First Folio; then my son’s new school could book them for their own backyard – but hold the “vintage” prithee!
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Macbeth, The Barden Party, Venue82, Studio at ZOO Southside, 10.40am, until Aug 22