fringe: the tempest - the handlebards

Last year we saw the male company of the Handlebards doing Twelfth Night.

It was fantastic, and as such, when the female company showed up with The Tempest for this year's Fringe, it was a given we were going to see them.

And I think I may have actually laughed more and harder and longer tonight than last time.

Tempest is not quite as "everybody pretending to be everybody else" as Twelfth Night, but there is definitely a lot going on, and once again, in the Handlebards style, there's a lot of roles but only four actors, so in parts of the show both random pieces of costume and random audience members stand in for some of the characters... or in on particular instance, every other character but one.

And all of our Handlebards were excellent, Lucy Williams in the green socks as Prospero, Tika Mu'tamir in the blue socks as Ariel, Gonzalo and Trinculo, Roisin Brehony in the red socks as Ferdinand, Caliban and Antonio and last but not least Katie Sherrard in the yellow socks as Miranda, Alonso, Stephano and Sebastian. I'll be honest that I'm not 100% about the sock colour this time, but I think that's right.

But there are always favourite actors and favourite roles, and Williams was scenery-chewingly sensational as Prospero, and I don't say that just because I ended up interacting with her a number of times from my front row seat. It started out with me being thrown her cloak, then replacing the cloak, tying it in a bow (I don't do bows well, it was horrible), and then later being brought up on stage to assist Prospero with her big magic show. Not my first time being dragged up on stage, but definitely a memorable and hilarious one.

Mu'tamir was great throughout, although I think I liked her as Ariel the most, just because of the rapport with Williams. But her beatboxing moment as Gonzalo was a standout.

Then we come to Brehony as "Babyhands" Caliban... I genuinely thought I was going to pass out from laughing so hard. From the hands to the helmet to the voice, a tour de force!

Sherrard was excellent, however she ended up with the characters who don't especially steal their scenes (she had some stiff competition), but she gave it her all, and worked that clamshell bikini.

I was also entranced by the "briefcase accordion" they had... I don't know what in the world it was, but it was beautiful.

And on top of all of that, some beautifully spoken and acted Shakespeare.

So once again, hats off to the Handlebards for providing an afternoon of quality entertainment

yani's rating: 5 magic cloaks out of 5

fringe: the will to be

The year is 1962. The place, an office in the English department of Melbourne University.

In that office is a man, William O'Halloran, played so beautifully and specifically by writer, co-producer and performer Mark Salvestro. And he just received a letter that will change his life.

This is the story of two Williams, O'Halloran and Shakespeare. And how the love of the bard led to our English professor finding love with Henry, one of his students, and then being fired as a result.

It was a complete accident that we saw this on the same night as Mardi Gras, but it definitely felt appropriate.

Salvestro is amazing. There is so much lightness and deftness to his performance, and so much specificity. From his continued eye contact with the audience at specific moments, to his use of a slight stammer to indicate the abject terror of this man whose life has begun to unravel before his eyes thanks to the dismissal letter from the university. His mannerisms as he tells his story just captured my heart, and I had the overwhelming urge to tell William that everything would work out okay eventually and that there was nothing wrong with him.

There is also the way that Salvestro weaves in passages from Shakespeare into his writing without it seeming jarring or glaringly obvious. In fact there were several times when I only realised he'd switched to Shakespeare when we were already mid way down the rabbit hole or a line I recognised came up (I know there was some Romeo and Juliet, some Hamlet, and then I think there were a lot of the Henrys and possibly some of the Richards). And it wasn't just the strength of his performance, it was also the strength of his writing, allowing his prose to stand up against extracts from Shakespeare.

At the same time, his description of that first forbidden kiss, that first new touch, the insecurity melting away under the warmth of action and emotion that just feel right, that make you feel alive, felt painfully real. And all the more painful given the background of the times, where homosexuality wouldn't be decriminalised until 1980 in Victoria and that the prevailing emotion for most men in William's position in his time was to feel deep shame and disgust about themselves and about their perfectly natural wants and desires.

Without spoiling the ending, I was afraid things would take a tragic turn for our William, but I was genuinely pleased that his story went in a different direction, one where he was in control of his own story. So much so that it left me wanting to know what happened next, always a good sign.

yani's rating: 5 unbuttoned shirts out of 5

fringe: twelfth night - the handlebards

What a delightful end to our 2019 Fringe adventure.

The Handlebards combine bicycles with Shakespeare, and peddle their way between venues (hopefully they got a plane all the way from England, then peddled once they got here). And they take on Shakespeare like a bike with no brakes going downhill.

It's fast, it's dangerous, but it's a hell of a ride.

In a lot of ways, they reminded me of Sound and Fury... between the quick changes, the crossdressing, the audience interaction, the insanity (plus the Shakespeare)... which is an excellent thing.

Our Bards (based on their socks and braces colours) were Ross Ford (the green bard), Mark Collier (the blue bard), Will Fawcett (the red bard) and Luke Wilson (the purple bard)... and they were amazing.

Twelfth Night isn't the simplest of Shakespeare plays... there's a lot of she's pretending to be a he and he's in love with her but she's in love with him... made even worse when you only have four actors playing all the roles. I say worse... it was manic and I loved it. Especially when there are four actors on stage but a minimum of eight character. And that each of the bards took on at least three characters over the course of the show.

It was also interesting that their characterisations (and costumes) were so good that you always knew exactly who they were, even if that bard had only been on stage seconds before and had rushed off one side and come back the other side.

I will say that Ross as Lady Olivia was my personal favourite, but everyone was fantastic, especially Mark as both Viola and Olivia's maid, plus Luke as Malvolio and Will as the jester.

What I was especially impressed by was that even when they were neck deep in quick changes, swapping characters and running around like maniacs, they still kept their performances going... and making sure you're actually performing, nailing your comedic timing AND getting the Shakespeare right isn't easy.

But they do it exceptionally well.

This was their first time at Fringe, and I hope we'll be seeing them again for years to come.

yani's rating: 5 bells out of 5

fringe: macbeth in space! (and two other locations...)

As I've said on multiple occasions, Macbeth and I go way back. We have a connection. I can't explain it, not entirely sure I want to.

But it's one of the first shows I look for at the Fringe. And I've seen a variety of versions at this point.

Full text versions, classical productions, modern political retellings, Australian gangsters, World War 2... the works.

What I've never seen is Macbeth played as a comedy. And it absolutely should not work. At all.

But somehow, some way, the Scrambled Prince Theatre Company (a touring youth theatre company based at Eltham High School in Melbourne), managed to do it.

And so we have the very literally titled: Macbeth in space! (and two other locations...).

This is Macbeth as a Star Trek episode, Macbeth as film noir story, Macbeth as a western.

It's also at it's heart an ensemble piece, where different actors play the required characters during the different locations. Space Macbeth is a pompous Zapp Brannigan/Kirk hybrid, Noir Macbeth is a slightly stupid New York mafia boss and Western Macbeth is a very trigger happy black clad bandito.

And this is, somehow strangely, the only interpretation of Macbeth I can really think of where the play is going out of it's way to tell you that Macbeth is a bad guy. I mean I know he does horrible things, but often times there is more than a little part of me what wants him not to fall all the way down the rabbit hole of the latter part of the play, and remain the Macbeth from the first two acts.

But here, he's no hero, not even an anti-hero... in all three parts of this production, he's straight up the villain (and often also a thundering moron) in each setting.

Most of the story gets told across the three segments, although a lot of the details are left by the wayside... which normally I would find problematic, but I didn't mind here since this was more interpretation rather than recitation.

I also think that you can judge a lot about a Macbeth production not just by it's titular lord and lady, but by the interpretation of the witches. And here we get, in order, a hive mind, a trio of beat poets and three poncho wearing singers. With the exception of the hive mind, the same three actors play the witches (technically I guess the same three take part in all the versions, since the hive mind uses the voices of everybody who isn't a main character at that point), and do so very well.

I do need to specifically call out the young woman who played both Space Banquo at the start, as well as the western version of Young Siward (I'm blanking on the character's in-universe name)... she was great as the Kif to Space Macbeth's Brannigan, but she was AH-MAH-ZING as Kid Siward... right from the opening of that section with her tiny cowboy hat, tiny guns and repeated ridiculous expressions she had me in stitches.

In fact the list of people who impressed me or at least made me laugh is fairly extensive. From Space Duncan to Space Lady Macbeth... Noir Gumshoe (again, the character name escapes me) to Noir Fleance to Noir Lady Macbeth... Western Malcolm to Western Lady MacDuff... in fact almost everyone who stepped up into a speaking role did remarkably well.

And the whole thing was actually funny. I think, beyond the performances, it was tying all of the tropes from the three different scenarios to Macbeth that managed to bring out the humour.

Staging was minimal, confined to a few black stools, but each genre change came with a complete, on-stage costume change for the entire cast (all twenty-something of them)... and often the ensemble actually became the staging.

The other thing that shouldn't have worked was putting music in... but there it was, and work it did. The singer, who also doubles as Noir Lady Macbeth, did a fantastic job both with the singing and the acting... although given the aforementioned laughter at Western Siward, I did feel a little guilty that all my attention was focus over there and not on her beautiful rendition of Desperado.

My hat goes off to every one involved in this production, they did a great job and I had an amazing time.

yani's rating: 5 bouncy chairs out of 5

fringe: when there's no strength in men

Following on from last year's Hamlet and Shakespeare's Ménage a Trois, the Raw Shakespeare Project returned this year with When There's No Strength in Men.

Shakespeare has a lot of strong female characters, and characters from three plays are on show here, Lady Macbeth, Katherine of France from Henry V and Rosalind from Orlando and Rosalind.

In fact there's a double dose in the Orlando and Rosalind section, as they take the cross dressing and deception of Shakespeare to the next level by having Orlando also be a woman disguised as a man.

Leah Anderson reprises her role as Lady Macbeth from Menage and while she does well, I still find her a little stiff, although clearly that's an acting choice. Her habit of delivering much of her dialogue very fast through clenched teeth however does make some of it difficult to understand. And it's odd because she's a lot easier to understand in the comedy roles.

Russell Slater makes for a good Macbeth, and I think the first one I've maybe ever seen wearing a kilt.

Isabella Shaw is impressive as Katherine of France, a little like last time she commands attention whenever she's on stage, and I was most impressed that she was managing not just Shakespeare but Shakespeare in French during this sequence. Slater makes for a menacing Henry during this sequence and Damien White has a good turn as the foppish King Charles of France.

Then after the tragical and the historical, it was time for the comical. And a play I am mostly unfamiliar with, As You Like It. Shaw returns as the genderbending Orlando while Amelia Lorien becomes her Rosalind.

Lorien was also doing brief interludes between the sections, singing various sonnets and a part of Loves Labours Lost with musical accompaniment from Kim Orchard. She has a beautiful singing voice and Orchard is a skilled musician, so they were quite lovely sections.

But Lorien excels as Rosalind/Ganymede and steals almost all of her scenes while pretending to be a man. In fact everyone seemed to be on top of their game in this section... Lorien and Shaw as the lovers, Anderson as first Rosalind's cousin and then a slightly lusty shepherdess, White as the fool, Touchstone and Slater as the lovesick shepherd.

The staging of the whole production was interesting... presented not so much "in the round" as "in a line between two banks of audience", the set was virtually non existent, being two standing boards at either end where the actors could duck away and a central lighting rig (and more than once I'm sure the actors semi blinded themselves by looking directly into those lights), but it all works.

I'm hoping at some stage they just put three of Shakespeare's comedies together... that would be a fun evening.

yani's rating: 4 maidens fair out of 5

fringe: flesh and bone

Let's just start with the most important thing and move on from there, shall we...

Flesh and Bone by London's Unpolished Theatre is AMAZING!

Writer, director and actor Elliot Warren has taken the rhythm and metre (and occasionally the words) of Shakespeare and transported it to an East London housing estate and the two just mesh together perfectly.

The stage is bare, the five actors are dressed much as you would expect in singlets, tracksuits and the like, and some of the language definitely leans towards profanity.

But the way language, foul or otherwise, is used is what makes this show so incredible.

Warren displays incredible skill in combining the spirit of Shakespeare with that tough as nails, rough as guts reputation of East London, but at the same time managing to make the characters humorous, relatable and sympathetic.

And the show goes from hilarious to moving to thought provoking and back again at the flick of a switch and had me welling up towards the end.

I don't want to say too much about the plot of the show itself as it is definitely something that needs to be experienced, but it's arranged in a number of separated but connected scenes, sometimes soliloquies, sometimes groups, but with that Shakespearean conceit of allowing a character to speak directly to and only to the audience at any moment.

Alongside Warren on stage as Terrence are his co-director Olivia Brady as Kel, and co-stars Alessandro Babalola as Jamal, Michael Jinks as Reiss and Nick T Frost as Granddad, who are all equally brilliant, although Jinks, Babalola and Warren were the ones that really stole my heart in the second half of the show (especially Jinks during his scenes as Reiss).

And because it was our day for audience participation I did have a somewhat intense moment with Babalola's Jamal where he took my hand (and I think I threw him off for a split second when I patted his hand and told him it would be okay) and then I got moved out of my seat during another scene and Warren's Terrence hugged me as I moved back (which I wasn't expecting at all).

Suffice to say that this is theatre done right, and definitely a show to go and see.

yani's rating: 5 footballs out of 5

state theatre company's macbeth

Imagine, if you will, a combination of The Scottish Play, a suspense/horror video game set in an insane asylum and a post apocalyptic world at war.

That's probably the best jumping off point to start talking about the State Theatre Company's production of Macbeth. As always, my history with Macbeth is long and varied, but I will say that every time I watch a new version I'm always collecting details to add to the one that I would make (if that ever just randomly happened). And this production, directed by Geordie Brookman, had a number of those details.

Starting with the set design by Victoria Lamb and the lighting design by Geoff Cobham, you feel the weight of the play right from the moment you step into the theatre. As I mentioned before, the set feels very, very much like a run down, broken space, and the first thought I had was of an old insane asylum, but then the moment when the table first appeared absolutely wowed me and made me look at everything with fresh eyes. And there were other unexpected moments like that throughout the play that surprised and amazed me.

Likewise the lighting was amazing throughout. From the barely lit pre-play moments though to the very end, the lighting added another level to the characters and the setting, particularly the varied uses of the high up windows within the set. And because a lot of the lighting was very, very bright, the moments when the stage was plunged into darkness were totally black which is always what you want from a play like this. I think my favourite lighting moment was when Macbeth speaks with the assassins, just the way he's lit partially in green versus them under downlights, gorgeous.

Lamb also designed the costumes, which really went for the post apocalyptic/warrior vibe, not flashy, but perfect for the characters and the world they enhabit. A particular standout was the witch, partially due to the choice to dress her in colours that were much closer to those of the set than anybody else so at various points she disappears slightly, but also the decision to mask off her eyes. That definitely contributed to the suspense/horror vibe, as did the decision to have her drool, spit or pour blood on other characters throughout the play.

Speaking of which, this is by far the bloodiest version of the play I've ever seen. By the end the majority of the cast is slathered with varying degrees of gore, and the play even starts on a scene of blood, leaning into the idea (as I've seen in a number of other productions) that Lady Macbeth was pregnant and lost a child, in this case seemingly to miscarriage.

If I have any complaint from the production standpoint, it's relatively minor and concerns the music. DJ Trip has put together a unique electronic score for the production, but, at least at the beginning, I found the music slightly drowned out a couple of the performers. As the show progressed they either addressed that if it was an unintentional technical issue or I grew accustomed to it, because I'll admit that by the end I barely noticed the music on a conscious level.

As the titular Lord and Lady, Nathan O'Keefe and Anna Steen are incredibly strong. O'Keefe has moments of genuine madness towards the end that can sometimes be lacking and is at other times truly frightening. Steen has some brilliant moments, not least of all the traditional "out damn spot" scene, which was heightened in this production by using the witch and the fact of Lady Macbeth's eventual suicide and combining all three elements together, which is both acted beautifully, but also a brilliant choice for the story. I will say that their chemistry as a couple wasn't perhaps as strong as it could have been. There were moments, but in this production I really thought of them as two independent characters rather than as a malevolent duo most of the time.

While I've mentioned her a couple of times already, Rachel Burke as the singular witch was phenomenal. She never leaves the stage and will often drift behind the characters, moving incredibly slowly, only to lurk or drool blood on a murdered character or otherwise interact with them in an otherworldly fashion. Add to that the fact that she also fills in as both Fleance and Macduff Jr and masterfully transforms her personality for both of the characters, while still keeping her witchly appearance.

Her turn as junior Macduff also lead to one of many, many brilliant small directorial details that were littered throughout the play. As she is both the witch and Macduff Jr, when Macbeth appears and stabs the child, it is Lady Macduff who receives the wound, even though she hasn't been touched.

I also totally appreciated that as the play progresses the people that Macbeth has murdered appear as parts of a dead chorus, and in the final pre-battle madness they fill in as guards and stewards and the doctor, leaving you never completely sure whether or not Macbeth is just talking to the voices in his head or to actual people or to projections by the witch.

Another stand-out for me was Elena Carapetis in a very small role as Lady Macduff (as well as being part of the dead chorus and one of the murderers), and while I'm incredibly glad that they gave her that role because she's excellent, I really, really wished we'd seen more of her throughout.

All in all this is definitely a very strong outing for The Scottish Play with some incredibly strong directorial choices and beautiful performances thoughout.

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fringe: signifying nothing

Signifying Nothing is Shakespeare done the way it's meant to be done... but with a twist.

Writer, co-director and star Greg Fleet takes the idea of the cut and thrust of the modern Australian political landscape and overlays it on the tale of deceit and ambition that is Shakespeare's Macbeth. Lord and Lady Macbeth become Paul and Lainey Macbeth... and the kingdom of Scotland becomes the premiership of Perth.

All of the action takes place in and around the bedroom of the Macbeths which makes perfect sense the more I think about it.

Half of the language is the bard's original, the other is Fleet's very modern Australian vernacular and parlance... not to mention a hell of a lot of profanity. Sometimes a word or two of modern language will creep into the Shakespeare to have it make sense in the world of the story.

And, you know what, it works... it works to perfection. It really shouldn't... but it does.

Fleet manages to capture the intent of Shakespeare's dialogue and then reinterpret it to fit his modern day context, weaving the two styles together so well that it never seems odd to go from Macbeth talking about taking Fleance to the football to Lainey reciting Lady Macbeth's first monologue direct from the play.

My ongoing love and familiarity with the Scottish play is, at this point, well know... and I will say that this is one of the best versions I've seen. It's a big call, but it's one I think is is well deserved.

A big part of that is Nicola Bartlett as the Lady to Fleet's Lord. She performs her lines the way that I want to see it done in every Shakespeare play that I see, with emotion and thought and feeling. They're not just a procession of words to be gotten out in the right order... no, Lainey Macbeth exists as a three dimensional character who is clearly thinking, feeling, plotting, scheming and manipulating with all the light and shade that that implies while speaking both Shakespeare's words and Fleet's.

Fleet's Macbeth is likewise fully formed, but he doesn't seem to have quite so much of the heavy lifting as far as the bard's prose is concerned. He also manages to make his Macbeth very charismatic.

Macbeth's friend and fellow politician Banquo (Luke Hewitt) and the five witches, as well as some initial set up and a recurring interview between Macbeth and a reporter (Roz Hammond) all take place projected onto the screen behind the bed (within the fiction of the play's universe, I think it's all happening on phone, tablet or television screens). It's an interesting technique and allows for additional parts of the narrative without additional actors on the ground.

To me this works the best in the initial conversation with Banquo and in the interactions with the witches. This is also ties into the use of technology in the rest of the play, specifically the "killing" of Duncan politically with a scandal rather than actually stabbing him.

As this version is only an hour long, and switches between modern language and the original text, all while focusing exclusively on the titular couple... so naturally there was a lot of the original play that had to go to make way for the new content. While it makes sense, I was sad to see sections like the entire banquet sequence be lost. It also felt like there were lines from parts of the play that I don't generally see performed.

Fleet's music choices also felt particularly spot on throughout the play, especially in the sequence where he mimes to a song (The Nosebleed Section by Hilltop Hoods, I think). It could have felt weird and out of place, but worked incredibly well.

If I had any complaints at all it would be that occasionally the prerecorded audio was a little hard to discern all the words to... particularly with the witches.

All in all I could not have asked for a better show to close out my Fringe 2017 experience.

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fringe: shakespeare's ménage a trois

Four players, three plays... well, three sequences from three plays...two comedies and a tragedy.

I started this year's Fringe with a visit to the Raw Shakespeare Project, and here I am, nearly at the end with a return visit. And a very different experience overall.

For Shakespeare's Ménage a Trois, they've taken sequences from three of the Bard's plays, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream and present them as self contained vignettes... so they become Beatrice and Benedick, The Tragedy of Lady Macbeth and Bottom’s Dream respectively.

As characters, Beatrice and Benedick are essentially screwball comedy before there was screwball comedy... and with Leah Anderson and Mark Drury as the titular pair, the barbs do fly thick and fast. Anderson clearly relishes the dialogue here and Drury is both leading man and prat-falling fool all at the same time.

Backing them up as four different characters are Isabella Shaw and Damien White... both Shaw and White have a talent for hamming it up (in the best possible way... and doubly so when White throws on a frock for comedy effect, especially with his beard), and in all three plays I found that I was drawn to Shaw anytime she was on stage, especially as Wall in Bottom's Dream (more on that in a minute).

After a brief break and a costume change Beatrice and Benedick transition to Lord and Lady Macbeth.

I will say that Drury makes an excellect Macbeth, but I did feel that Anderson was a little stiff in her delivery, more so in her opening monologue than when she spoke to Drury. But as I've said before, it's hard to remember all that dialogue AND be able to make it all live as speech at the same time. Or maybe that was just an acting choice for Lady M, as she was certainly full of personality in the other two sequences.

The sequence was very much Lady M's story (as the name suggests), so it kept some of my favourite lines ("O, full of scorpions is my mind, dear wife!") and lost others ("That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold!"). White and Shaw were less prevalent here, just because the story has been trimmed of all but a few additional characters.

And then, as Shaw announced to the crowd, Lady Macbeth needed a bit of a cuddle, so after a brief break we were back in the land of the fairies with Oberon and Titania.

The first thing I have to say about this sequence is that I absolutely adored the choice of costuming. I half wished they'd done this throughout, although how well it would have worked for Macbeth is debatable...

Drury as Oberon, Shaw as Titania and Anderson as Puck were all wearing jeans and printed t-shirts declaring them "Fairy King", "Fairy Queen" and "Hobgoblin" respectively. Drury's shirt especially got a massive laugh from the crowd (although all I could think was "I want one!"). White filled out the quartet as the ass-eared object of Titania's enchanted affections, and then the other three threw on coats and hats to play the players within the play.

Shaw did a fantastic job as Titania, managing to be equal parts sultry and petulant... and Anderson was manically gleeful as Puck, bounding across the stage at every opportunity and really showing a completely different side to her personality.

But where they all really shone were as the players... White was pompous and hammy as Bottom/Pyramus, Drury radically transformed into a very childlike Flute/Thisbe, Anderson combined the roles of Quince and Snug into one, also managing a very meek lion but the standout was Shaw as Snout/Wall... she was hilarious, rolling her eyes at Bottom and making Wall more than a little naughty.

I've never really like the player characters in Midsummer, they've always felt like Shakespeare came up a few pages short and was just padding the play out, but I genuinely enjoyed this interpretation.

In fact I thoroughly enjoyed the whole performance.

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fringe: altar girl

Teenage girls are horrible spiteful creatures... not individually perhaps, but get them in a group, or get on the wrong side of one and, as the man himself once said, hell hath no fury.

Altar Girl is Shakespeare's Othello "as told by teenage girls out for revenge".

And the tunnels under the Adina Apartment Hotel are the perfect setting. The space seems quite odd for a theatre piece, being long and narrow with the audience sitting along the length. But with some clever staging by director Alanah Guiry and the use of mirrors at either end, the audience is able to see pretty much everything that happens.

I will admit that I'm only passingly familiar with the original version, but as the story here is different enough to the original that it really didn't hamper my enjoyment in the least. The language is modern, with the occasional Shakespearean phrase thrown in. And setting the play in what feels like the latter half of a party means that everybody is primed for drama when it begins.

The cast is small, and about half of the characters are gender flipped, so Othello becomes Ollie, Iago becomes Lara and Roderigo becomes Rory, while Cassio and Desdemona remain Michael and Dess respectively. Which for the second time this Fringe means that the main character and their love interest in a Shakespeare inspired piece have been turned into a lesbian couple.

Substituting sexuality gives an interesting twist on the racial subplot of the original.. in fact sexuality and power are the key themes here, as Lara tells us and the other characters more than once "everything is about sex, except sex, which is about power".

Although Ollie is played by Shamita Sivabalan, the only non-white member of the cast, so they don't abandon race completely.

All the performances are exceptionally good but while I'm fully aware that Iago (or in this case Lara) is the villain of the piece, Jeni Bezuidenhout is just so incredibly magnetic in the role that I couldn't help but be drawn into her world of intrigue and revenge.

I knew Lara was bad, but I didn't care... I wanted her to succeed, even though none of the other characters have done anything to deserve her wrath. Even the moments when the focus was on other characters I was often drawn back to her. It also helped because she's the only character who addresses the audience directly once the play gets going.

Lucy Orr has the difficult job of making Rory both awkward, pathetic and sympathetic, which she manages admirably... and it's easy to see how she falls under Lara's spell so completely.

The show only runs until the end of this week, so I highly recommend going to see it if you can.

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fringe: half hour hamlet

This is our second time seeing Patrick Hercamp perform his half hour version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.

For the purposes of the show Hercamp is not the titular Dane but rather Shakespeare, translating the play into the modern language of the day (our day, not Shakespeare's). The role of Hamlet gets filled in by an audience member (which in this particular show turned out to be me, thanks for that Patrick), and Hercamp then directs much of the explaination/play directly to them (or, for the purposes of this review, "me"). Fortunately this entails sitting in the audience and holding Yorrick (the skull) and not being on stage.

Like last time there are also soundbites for the audience to recite... when anybody dies, when poison is mentioned, when everybody is blissfully happy (remembering of course that this is Hamlet, so that one doesn't come up a lot) and when "your grandfather kisses your sister" (or "ewwwwwww"). A little like last time, the first two of these are basically a noise and a word together, which get progressively more difficult for the audience to manage to remember for some reason as time goes on.

Having the whole half hour essentially directed right at me was something of a unique experience. I love Hercamp's energy at the best of times, and being right in the focus of it was amazing and more than a little dazzling.

The show itself feels somewhat tighter than last year, I'm guessing mostly because he's had a year to really relax into the performance, as well as refine it and lose anything that didn't work in favour of things that did. As I said before Hercamp's energy and performance is really what makes this an amazing show to watch. To keep the level of performance at around 11 for the whole half hour show really shows how skilled he is as a performer and an improviser (whether it was when a random somebody banged on the fence of the beer garden or when I said "whoopsy" about the death of Polonius, Hercamp just picks it up and runs with it).

I do find myself wondering if this is something that could work with other Shakespeare plays or if there's something particular about Hamlet that makes this work as incredibly well as it does.

In any event, it's a show I highly recommend you go and see, whether you're familiar with Hamlet or not.

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fringe: shakespeare's waiting room

Mr William Shakespeare is auditioning some his most famous characters in order to determine who is the most dramatic.

Yes, technically if you think about it too hard the premise doesn't make a lick of sense, but as a framework for the show, it works quite well.

Lady Macbeth, Titania, Bottom, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet all turn up for an audition, perform the most tragic and dramatic sequence for the respective stories and then stick around to snipe at the other characters before, during and after their turns.

The location of this show was both a positive and negative I have to say... it's at Live on 5 at Adelaide Oval, and the stage has been set up looking out over the oval itself. As settings go, not too damn shabby.

However on nights like tonight when it's quite hot, it's not the most pleasant venue, and although there was some amazing reverberation and echo happening partly from the amplification but mostly from the general acoustics of the place, there were points when the actors strayed a little too far from the microphones and were slightly hard to hear (Juliet especially). The planes coming in at various points didn't especially help that either.

The other complaint I have to mention is that this was advertised in the guide as a 90 minute show, but I think it went for just under an hour... so when the play was "over" (I think we may have been waiting for the usual return of the actors to tell us to tell our friends about the show and leave them a review, etc... which didn't happen) nobody left until one of the stage hands came out to tell us it was definitely over.

Costuming is simple but effective, everybody just wears black, modern clothing that still manages to suit their character (especially Lady Macbeth... but then she was always going to be my favourite).

Likewise, the set itself is just the titular waiting room, with a little space on one side for the characters to perform for Mr William.

I can't find anything about the cast of the play, so I'm just going to have to refer to them by their characters...

Unsurprisingly Lady Macbeth was my favourite... she was such a bitch, but in the best possible way. However both Titania and Bottom were excellent also... especially Bottom playing the rather dense fool.

The gold star has to go to the waiting room receptionist though... not just for her amazing facial expressions throughout each and every audition, but also when she gets a chance to really cut loose, she's amazing.

In fact everyone did a great job with the Shakespeare parts of the show, even Romeo and Juliet manage to go from ditzy teens to starcrossed lovers without a hitch.

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fringe: hamlet

In much the same way that the original performances of Shakespeare's plays included young men in the women's roles, the Raw Shakespeare Project takes that idea and flips it on it's head somewhat, casting young women as both Hamlet (Leah Anderson) and Horatio (Jess Carroll).

And by leaving the rest of the cast in their traditional gender roles makes the whole play feel somehow more modern given Hamlet's relationships with her uncle-king (there's definitely a level of sleaze there on his part), her friend Guildenstern and the object of her affection, Ophelia.

The cast made great use of the layout of the location (Brick+Motar in Norwood), with the raised entrance as the stage, two sets of stairs and a ramp. Because the venue is a cafe in it's regular life the additional set dressing was minimal, just a painted sheet and a wooden box, both of which served as various items at different points.

On the whole the performances were excellent, but I have to give special mention to Aarod Vawser who plays Laertes, Guildenstern and the Player Villain in the play within the play. Of all the cast he seemed to be the most invested in his characters, and he wasn't just reciting the words, he was performing every phrase with a level of character and emotion that was just spot on. So much so that when he returned as Laertes and discovers the death of his sister I was genuinely moved by his grief. And he was just the right amount of crazy as Guildenstern. Keep an eye on his name, because I have no doubt he will go on to great things.

In the title role, Leah Anderson was definitely impressive, although because Hamlet spends much of the play in a state of melancholy and anger, I found that she did deliver a lot of her dialogue in the first half of the play through very closed teeth while speaking very fast. It was a stylistic choice, certainly, but it did occasionally render some of her words as a stream of sound rather than speech.

Ellie McPhee really shines once Ophelia goes mad (although really, is there all that much to Ophelia before that point, she's a little bland)... especially the choice to get her to sing parts of her madness, genuinely disturbed.

I wasn't completely convinced by Russell Slater's vocal choice for King Claudius... somewhere between Christopher Walken and an Eastern European Bond villain... but he is the director as well.

The costuming was interesting... especially Hamlet's black on black on black, complete with corset and an amazing long jacket. Vawser has the most changes of costume with his three very different characters (of which I think I liked the Player Villain one the most), but he does some good costume acting with his Guildenstern cloak.

As I mentioned before, the dynamic between McPhee and Anderson was interesting as beyond changing pronouns there were no other changes due to the casting of a woman in the title role. But to be honest it was more when other characters were talking about the two of them that I noticed it more (including the problem of changing references from he and her to her and her means it's occasionally harder to know which of the two characters they're talking about).

It was an interesting take on the Danish play though.

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fringe: half hour hamlet

Patrick Hercamp is one third of one of my favourite Fringe acts, Sound and Fury, and for the purposes of his first solo show, Half Hour Hamlet, is our guide through Shakespeare's Danish play.

But he's not Hamlet... no, that duty fell to young Conner from the audience, who Hercamp then directed much of the ensuing explanation/play to.

And there's a job for the audience too... Phrases to say when anybody dies, when poison is mentioned, when everybody is blissfully happy (this only happened twice I think) and when "your mother kisses your sister" (the general ewwww noise). They're good tricks for audience involvement, but at a certain point the audience kind of forgot what the sound bites were for different things.

I'm not completely sure either trick was needed to be honest, Hercamp is an energetic performer and his rapid fire delivery of a modern explanation/retelling of Shakespeare's story seems to work best without interruption... of course they do allow him to take a breath every now and again.

At only thirty minutes it's a tight show but never feels overly rushed, but rather is carried along by Hercamp's boundless enthusiasm and energy. The general insanity is perhaps not as high as when he's part of Sound and Fury, but then he is carrying the whole show, sans set or props or anything... not even a skull for Yorrick.

Whether you know Hamlet, love Hamlet or are largely ambivalent to Hamlet, Half Hour Hamlet is thirty minutes well spent.

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fringe: the bunker trilogy

Last time Jethro Compton and the crew brought The Bunker Trilogy to Adelaide for the Fringe, we were supposed to see all three parts on the same night. Unfortunately that didn't happen and we saw Morgana and Agememnon together and then Macbeth a couple of weeks later.

This time around I managed to see all three parts on the same day, one after the other. A lot of what I said last time definitely holds true this time around, and while I'll try to limit the amount of comparisons I make between the two versions, they are somewhat inevitable.

The titular bunker has been placed inside Noel Lothian Hall in the Botanical Gardens, and unlike last time, the audience never sees the bunker from the outside, entering through one of the doors to the hall and being transported straight into the dirt, wood, sandbags and inherent claustrophobia of the enclosed First World War themed space. The action for all three plays takes place within the space, with the audience seated around the outside of the room and the actors filling the space in the middle.

Actors Hayden Wood, Sam Donnelly and Bebe Sanders all return, joined this time by Jonathan Mathews.

As with the previous version, one of the things that was still so amazing to me given seeing the three parts back to back to back in the same space with the same actors is the way all four actors switch characters so completely from one play to the next. Possibly Sanders is the least changed, but even she changes accent and personality in each role.

It also appears that Compton and writer Jamie Wilkes made a few changes to the scripts (at the very least just to Macbeth, or at least that's the change that I noticed).

I will say before I jump onto the individual plays that, minor differences aside, it all holds up just as well this time as it did last time. The acting, staging and the experience that is The Bunker Trilogy is one that's well worth seeing.

The Bunker Trilogy - Morgana

Morgana is a take on the Arthurian legend, with Wood as a suitably kingly and dignified Arthur, Donnelly as a rakish if slightly bullying Lancelot, Mathews as the naive and loquacious Gawain and Sanders as a sweet Guinevere. It's also a story of three young men who have known each other since they were children and who are now in the middle of a war the likes of which Europe hadn't seen for a hundred years. And Wilkes finds all the places that those two stories intersect, but I do feel that this is more about the World War I story than the legend. Which isn't a criticism, I think it's works exceptionally well that way.

In a lot of ways it's the lightest in tone of the three, starting with audio of Christmas carols being piped into the bunker (which to me doesn't work as well as having the characters being in the space singing like they were in the previous version), although it does darken in tone towards the end.

As I said about the previous version, Sanders has less to do in this play than in the other two, but that's mostly because this really is the story of the relationship between Wood, Donnelly and Mathews, in a lot of ways the characters that Sanders plays are merely accessories to that relationship. And you believe the relationship right from the word go, the three men have an easy chemistry that makes their interactions, both good and bad, completely believable.

The Bunker Trilogy - Agamemnon

For Agamemnon, both Mathews and Sanders command all attention... Mathews as the titular Agamemnon and Sanders as his unnamed wife, Clytemnestra. In fact one of the most interesting things that I noticed about this play is that nobody is referred to by name (I guess due to it being too strange to have English characters called Agamemnon and Clytemnestra to be honest), and I don't think I noticed it the first time.

While this is very much Mathews and Sanders' times to shine, both Donnelly and Wood do excellent work here as well, Wood as meek and bumbling Aegisthus and Donnelly as an unnamed (but Scottish) battlefield soldier who takes care of the wounded Agamemnon. As I mentioned earlier, all of their transformations between this play and Morgana are the most extreme I think, especially Wood and Donnelly.

To me though, it's Mathews who really dominates this whole piece, flicking between the clear agony of a fatally wounded Agamemnon on the battlefield to the man that wooed Clytemnestra in the flashbacks which make up the other half of the play. Likewise Sanders does her best work here, especially in the latter part of the play where she comes to hate her absent husband.

The moving between past and present, which is a technique used in all three plays, is best used here I think, or at least due to both the lighting design and the use of the space, they're the most clearly defined sections between "then" and "now". Once again, the beginning of the play has been changed, without the characters already being in place when it starts, which I think is a loss to both this and Morgana.

It's the ending that puzzles me most of all though... I'm still not sure which of the two endings is actually the true one... or if they both somehow are.

The Bunker Trilogy - Macbeth

My obsession with Macbeth is well documented, and I still believe that the way that Compton and Wilkes have streamlined Shakespeare's original story down to the pure elements of the relationship of Lord and Lady Macbeth and Banquo is one that the Bard himself would have heartily approved.

Unlike the other two plays, this one features the original Shakespeare prose as opposed to more naturalistic speech, but the way it's been pared down is incredibly elegant.

This is also the only one of the three plays to keep the opening from the previous version where the three male actors are in the space as the audience enters, wearing gas marks and just being the creepiest thing ever without them having to do a great deal.

The masks are used well through the whole show in fact, both to signify the minor characters (and to not confuse the audience when an actor is playing three or four different roles), but most powerfully to signify the other-worldly characters... both the witches and the spirit of Banquo... as these shambling, twisted, zombie-like creatures. Removing the faces of the witches and making them almost empty vessels filled by evil spirits works incredibly well... and using the gas masks, which themselves signify a menace that itself can't be seen but can be felt (poison gas) is incredibly smart.


I feel like of the three, Macbeth is the one that has perhaps had the most changes, the best of which is the ending, which I mentioned last time as coming a little too soon and cutting out the battle between Macbeth and Macduff completely. Now there's an actual resolution instead of the instant cut to black, and it's definitely a change for the better.

Donnelly is brilliant again as Macbeth, there's something about him in general that is both magnetic and commanding, part of which he brings to Lancelot, but which he completely hides as the unnamed soldier... but as Macbeth he's as crazed and bloodthirsty as you'd want your Thane of Cawdor to be.

I feel like I've been somewhat harsh on Sanders overall, and while she does good work as the Lady to Donnelly's Lord, she just seems a little less passionate than her fellow actors... it's a shame, she does so well in Agamemnon, and I would have thought the fire she had there would have translated well to Lady Macbeth, but it just felt a little flat in spots.

Wood once again gives a strong performance as Banquo, and as I said last time, that friendly, open quality he brought to Arthur and Aegisthus makes him an ideal Banquo (there's also something about the relative height difference between Donnelly and Wood that manages to say a lot about Macbeth's ambition without it ever needing to be said aloud).

And Mathews is relatively absent from a major role this time around... he does play a lot of the incidental characters as well as Macduff right at the end, but seeing the plays in this particular order it seems like he'd be happy to take a slightly back seat after putting everything into Agamemnon.

All in all though, it's a fantastic adaptation of the Scottish play.

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movies: macbeth

My connection (ie obsession) with versions of the Scottish play is well established at this point, so it's no surprise I was excited to see the version of Macbeth directed by South Australian director, Justin Kurzel.

And it's a stunning adaptation. Possibly the most beautiful I've seen.

Visually the combination of the Scottish locations (which I believe is the first time that there has been a movie version filmed on the Scottish moors), the cinematography from Adam Arkapaw, the production design, costumes and make-up all come together brilliantly.

Kurzel went with a very "realistic" approach, from the setting to the costumes to the set designs, it all feels historically appropriate. But settings like the final battle sequence are so spectacularly staged that they're just breathtaking.

Michael Fassbender plays the titular Thane of Glamis while Marion Cotillard is his lady... and they both do incredible work, even though I'm generally not a massive fan of Cotillard.

All the cast is great in fact, although I will say that the decision to use "authentic" Scottish brogue on top of the Shakespearean language did mean that even I who knows the play pretty much backwards and sideways couldn't always tell what they were saying.

There are generally three places where you make your mark as a director/writer with Macbeth... how you deal with the witches, the parts of the play you leave out, and the things you add visually because you can't add them verbally.

And this version got them all pretty spot on for the universe of the movie... the witches, beyond a little ritual scarification here and there, are very grounded in reality, as was everything else... although the decision to have essentially five characters instead of the regular three was a little odd, although one was a child and the other a baby. They also added in the ghost of a teenaged soldier who dies at the beginning, and assigned some of the lines from the witches to him, but that's easy enough to suggest that they conjure him.

I could complain a little about the parts they left out... but at this point I've seen versions with every possible combination of extractions... it's just that in this case, it's one of my favourite lines (and one that I have on the wall in my bedroom):

That which hath made them drunk hath made me bold.
What hath quenched them hath given me fire.

In fact a large amount of the things they removed from Macbeth/Lady M come from around the murder scene. Also gone is the "hubble bubble" sequence,I'm guessing because it felt too theatrical and over the top.

Other things to find themselves on the chopping block, as usual, were Duncan's younger son, the sequence between Malcolm and MacDuff about how terrible a king Malcolm would be, and the Lady MacDuff/Ross scene.

Those I can all live with them removing as they do have a tenancy to slow things down.

It's the things they added that were the most interesting... they add the battle that we only hear about at the beginning of the play, but then "show not tell" works much better in the movies. They also add in the "previous death of a child" that I've seen in a few versions which comes from one of Lady Macbeth's lines about knowing what it is to have a child suckle at her breast.

And the other thing is a sequence at the end that involves Banquo's son Fleance... given the fact that the witches tell Macbeth he will be king, but that Banquo will be father to a line of kings... but at the end of the play it's Malcolm who takes back the throne, not young Fleance, there's a cryptic little coda that may mean that Malcolm is going to now hunt down Fleance to secure his title.

It's definitely an interesting take, and not something that I've ever seen put together like that, and it was really, really good.

They also do a brilliant version of Birnam Wood "coming to" Dunsinane, and likewise not once I've seen depicted before.

This is a stunning version of the story, beautifully realised, brilliantly acted and a credit to everybody who was involved.

yani's rating: 5 ghostly daggers out of 5

fringe: sound and fury's hamlet and juliet

This is my fourth time seeing Sound and Fury... and my second time at their self styled Fakespearean comedy, Hamlet and Juliet (see also Dirty Fairy Tales and Hitchcocked), and as always I walked out of the tent with my face absolutely aching from laughing for pretty much the entire show.

And seriously, is there any greater recommendation for a comedy show than that?

The brilliant and longsuffering Richard along with the delightfully unhinged and adorable Patrick have returned from the US, but sadly this time they're not joined by fellow American, Ryan (or to call him by his traditional name, Hung Like A Horse)... instead they have the lovely and ever so slightly camp (in the best possible way) Shane filling in.

Which somehow manages to make it a completely different show, even though we've seen it before. Actually I'm pretty sure you could see this show every night for a week straight and it would feel different every time. And even though the mix is different with the change in the cast, most of what I said last time holds true this time around too... it's not always the most polished humour (which makes if that much funnier), but it is genuinely, laugh out loud funny. It also often has that edge of both frenetic energy with a slight edge of panic.

One of the things I really love about Sound and Fury is that they go out of their way to make a connection with the audience... whether that's chatting with people before the show, making everything feel really informal once you go inside the venue, or just the fact that they always seem to be willing to go that extra mile to get a laugh (or just make the most of it when they screw up... and given the pace of the show, you can pretty much guarantee that somebody will screw up at some point... but it's always worth waiting for). And also that they enjoy making each other laugh as much as the audience.

The show itself is a mix of Shakespeare's two tragedies, Hamlet plus Romeo and Juliet, smashed together and then all mixed up with pop culture references (and nice work to Shane on The Princess Bride gags... keep those in the show!) and humour that is (to quote their website) 70% low brow and 30% high brow.

And even if you know nothing about Shakespeare, go for the cross-dressing and the Sean Connery impression, Patrick's dry heaving and the inappropriate jokes.

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fringe: sound and fury's hamlet and juliet

I think you'd have to look fairly hard to find a trio of Fringe performers as genuinely lovely as Richard, Ryan and Patrick from Sound and Fury.

They all wandered out of the tent before the show and just hung out with the audience before things started officially.

Okay, so when Richard first wandered out, we were the entire audience... but then it was an 11am show on a Saturday morning, and I think the whole audience ended up being maybe a dozen or so people.

But once we got inside the tent, their energy level was enough for if they were playing to a full house.

And like their Dirty Fairy Tales show, they were performing even before the official show started, partly just screwing around, partly telling stories... just very funny, if totally random, stuff (as well as a bonus "Morals Song" as an encore after the show).

They also don't have a problem with the audience taking photos during the show (they were posing as models from various centuries in the photo on the left below, this was their 1970's pose), although if you're messing around with your phone too much they will call you out on it.

As I said last year, they're a little bit like the funniest people you know, it's not always the most polished humour, but it is genuinely, laugh out loud funny. It also often has that edge of both frenetic energy with a slight edge of panic (which is actually amusing in its own right), but you can tell when they're making it up as they go and making themselves laugh as they do it.

And they're still as frenetic, dirty and funny as I remember.

This time the show is a mash-up of two of Shakespeare's tragedies, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet... but they discard Romeo and make the Prince of Denmark fall in love with the maid of Verona (hence the title). And with a heavy dose of improvisation thrown into the mix too.

I'm pretty familiar with Romeo and Juliet, less so with Hamlet... but it really is a great mash-up of the two... characters from one play are both their original character as well as a character from the other play and it all gets mushed together in one very funny comedy (even if everybody does die at the end).

Just like last time I definitely had a giant crush on young Patrick (hello... he's a short, cute, redheaded, freckled young gentleman, what's not to love)... he's definitely the big joker of the three, and I love watching his face when the other two throw him a curve ball, he really doesn't have much of a poker face, which is just fun to watch.

I also love that they always make him the female characters, or at least the titular Juliet this time around... but he does look pretty good in the big curly wig.

Ryan is definitely the wicked one of the three, or else he just gets all the dirty lines in the productions... and his revenge on Patrick towards the end of the performance had me in stitches. I'm not sure that's a regular thing judging from Patrick's reaction though.

Once again Richard tries to hold it all together, or at least it seems that way, although he does have his own great moments, like an awesome Sean Connery impression.

Their comic timing is still exceptional, even when one of them forgets their lines (not singling anyone out or anything... Patrick) and it's clear that they're having just as much fun as the audience.

I'm very glad that we're going to see their other show next week... they're definitely staying firmly in place on the "must see again" list.

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manchester international festival's macbeth

Seeing the Manchester International Festival’s production of Macbeth presented by National Theatre Live in the Palace Nova movie theatre was something of a unique and slightly odd experience.

The performances took place in a deconsecrated Manchester church in July this year and were filmed by National Theatre Live, so it's something of a hybrid between a movie and a live theatre performance.

I can imagine actually being in the audience at the church would have been an incredible experience, the performance takes place in the the nave or middle aisle of the church, while the audience is seating along the two aisles to either side.

Also adding to the unique set up for the play was the fact that the nave was also covered in a layer of earth, which made for a very different aesthetic and performance space and added a layer of pseudo realism to the fact that wading through dirt would have been a common occurrence at the time the play was both written and set. This was compounded by the fact that they somehow managed to make it rain inside the church during the opening battle scenes, turning the earth to mud.

I did feel a little like it was getting in the way at some points... I was more aware of the fact that the actors were having to slog through this layer of mud than I would have liked, and it meant that certain moments lacked a little bit of elegance as it's hard to walk across an uneven muddy surface.

Otherwise the church was an absolutely gorgeous setting, especially the alter area which is dressed with a large number of candles.

I'm going to be honest, although Kenneth Branagh has done a lot of Shakespeare in his time, I wasn't overly captivated with his portrayal of the titular Scottish thane. In fact the whole thing felt a little... melodramatic, if I'm being completely honest. Not just from Branagh, but from all the actors. I know it's Shakespeare and one of the tragedies and as such has a heightened sense of emotion and drama, but it felt a little bit much. Especially when it meant that a lot of the performances seemed to be permanently pitched at about 11.

I think I was also expecting some of the River Song style strength from Alex Kingston's portrayal of Lady M, but again her performance seemed to be coming from a more melodramatic place, especially the "out, damned spot! out, I say!" seemed a little over the top given some of the more haunted versions I've seen of that scene.

I really, really wanted to like this... but I have to say that I've seen better versions.

I was also a little disappointed with the three witches... generally you can tell a lot about a production by how they treat the witches, but they went with a version where they screeched a lot of their lines and although they turned up on stage at a few points that weren't specifically witch scenes, I didn't think their makeup and costuming choices were completely memorable. Yes, they looked unnatural in dark grey shift dresses and matching facepaint, but I just wasn't feeling it.

There were a few unique touches... most notably casting Banquo as a much older man (Jimmy Yuill) which then meant that Fleance (Patrick Neil Doyle), his son was a young man in his twenties rather than a child... but also their interpretation of Birnam Wood as shields constructed of thin branches.

So all in all, while it was an interesting experience, it wasn't the best one that I've had with Macbeth.

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urban myth theatre company's macbeth

I took my annual trip (at least for the last four years) to see a production of Macbeth tonight.

This version of the Scottish play featured the Senior Ensemble of the Urban Myth Theatre Company, many of whom, according to the program, were working on Shakespeare for the very first time.

It's also possibly the first version of Macbeth that I've seen where the titular character was actually the third most charismatic male actor.

But in a lot of ways, once I managed to get my head around the idea, it actually served the character and the play better than I thought it would.

Edwin Kemp-Attrill's Macbeth is craven, small and at times a little bit awkward.

Some versions of Macbeth that I've seen, the main character has a long way to fall from the moment we meet him until the final battle scene, but Kemp-Attrill's version embodies a different kind of Macbeth.

By comparison both Nic Cutts who performs double duty as both King Duncan and the heroic Macduff and Josh Mensch in his role as Banquo both light up the stage with personality and charisma.

During Mensch's first appearance I couldn't help making the comparison between him and Kemp-Attrill and wondering whether he wouldn't have made a better Macbeth... but as soon as Cutts appeared, I felt like he was actually the Macbeth I was waiting for.

But, having said that, by the end of the play I would not have traded in either Mensch or Cutts performances.

Mensch does a brilliant job as Banquo... and once the character becomes the gory-locked spirit Mensch ramps his performance up to about eleven. He also manages to completely transform himself for the small role as Lady Macbeth's doctor, not just through costume, but his performance feels completely different.

Cutts is hard to take your eyes off of every time he steps on stage. There were two scenes that really stood out to me... the first being when Lady Macbeth (Alex Petkova) welcomes Duncan to the castle... Cutts scoops up Petkova like she's his long lost little sister, and it makes everything that comes after feel that much more like a betrayal.

The second moment is MacDuff's speech once he learns that Macbeth has slaughter his entire household. I've seen that scene performed about a dozen times, but this is the first time I've witnessed such a raw, emotional performance like the one Cutts gave. It's not over the top, it's clearly a man who is totally in shock and trying to process the fact that his whole world has just fallen apart. And it's the second time that I've teared up during a performance of Macbeth.

It also means that when the final confrontation between Macbeth and Macduff happens I was more emotionally invested than I have been in some performances.

Petkova was an interesting Lady Macbeth... her finest performance moment is during the "out damn spot" sleepwalking scene, especially when she walks towards the audience intoning "to bed" over and over. But there are other moments where she feels less convincing.

To be honest, a lot of the moments with Petkova and Kemp-Attrill conveying the passion between the two characters didn't completely ring true for me, although I'm not completely sure why. When Cutts embraced her it was believable, but when it was Lord and Lady Macbeth it just felt a little hollow.

Petkova also takes on the role of one of the witches along with Emma Kew and Lucca Boyce who managed to make the hair stand up on the back of my neck in their opening scene. It's something about when the witches speak in unison that always has the ability to do that to me.

Director Nick Garsden edited the play down to under two hours and took out a number of scenes or edited others sometimes a little severely. While I recognise the scenes that were lifted out completely, there was only one edit that really stood out to me, and that's during Macbeth's second confrontations with the witches and he describes seeing a vision of Banquo and his children... there was a slightly clumsy edit that removes all references to the children except for the final line. If you weren't familiar with the play you may not notice it, but it stood out to me.

Set and costume designer Kerry Reid chose an interesting look and feel for the play... it's one part industrial, one part Australian military and one part post-apocalypse. The set was completely comprised of corrugated iron columns with the occasional quote from the play graffiti'ed on the walls.

The costumes were mostly a lot of big greatcoats, waistcoats, black pants and a lot of hats in black, grey and dark blue... although there are brief moments of colour such as Macbeth's red waistcoat and Lady Macduff's blue gown.

While it wasn't the most polished of productions I've ever seen (even though this was the last night of a ten night run), there were a few moments that made it worth the trip to go and see.

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