cast list
Gabriel Gawin, Anna Zubrzycki, Ian Morgan, Faroque Khan, Ewan Downie, Kacper Kuszewski, Anu Salonen, with musician Rafal Habel.
directed by
Grzegorz Bral
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As part of the the festival of Polish culture festival POLSKA! YEAR, Polish avante-garde theatre group Song of the Goat brings its stripped down version of Macbeth to the Barbican - and while it is not exactly an unqualified triumph, it is certainly a strikingly original effort.
A mixture of dance, polyphonic song, music and words, this version focuses on the beginning and end of the Shakespeare play, stripping out most of the text so that it rattles along at fairly breathtaking speed, covering the whole story in one tightly-paced hour.
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Designer/director Grzegorz Bral's and designer Mira Zelechower-Aleksiun's sparse stage set - screens and candles, effectively used - provides a suitably bleak setting, while the vaguely Asian styling of Cristina Gonzalez's simple but effective costumes (echoed in the martial arts feel to much of the movement) hark back to feudal Japan, perfectly resonating with the play's themes of loyalty and power, and an age when there was no crime more heinous than the killing of a king.
The dancing is impressive in its sheer physicality; a mixture of martial arts and interpretative movement that encapsulates the warlike themes of the story: standout moments include a stunningly choreographed battle and, at one stage, the performers literally crawling the walls. The singing creates some atmospheric moments, most notably when the ensemble sings the fatal prophecies that give Macbeth his false hope.
But there are flaws. The accompanying music - skilfully played by Rafal Habel on a mix of traditional instruments (including Korean string instruments) - is evocative but occasionally tips into distracting; and sometimes the singing seems a pointless addition rather than an integral part of the production.
The performers, while deserving of praise for their singing and dancing, fall down on their actual acting; as Banquo, Malcolm and Macduff respectively, Kacper Kuszewski, Ewan Downie, and Ian Morgan seem lightweight, and come across as slightly more camp than you'd expect Scottish nobles to be, and while Faroque Khan is suitably regal as Duncan, he doesn't have a whole lot to do. Gabriel Gawin's Geordie accent as Macbeth shouldn't be distracting but is, perhaps because he really only finds the power in his voice as the play approaches its climax. Anna Zubrzycki's Lady Macbeth is a one-note reading, shrill and overdone, while Anu Salonen's deliberately over-mannered witch is, one suspects, supposed to be deeply sinister but tended more towards raising a giggle than a shiver.
And herein lies the problem. In editing a rich and nuanced play into a sixty minute sprint, all but the key speeches are jettisoned; serving to give just enough of a taste of the language to make you want the rest of it. None of the ensemble give the words the gravitas they deserve, making it an ultimately unsatisfying production - I couldn't help feeling they would have been better abandoning the text completely and reinterpreting the whole thing as a musical performance: as it stands, it is a strange hybrid that amounts to less than the sum of its parts. One to file under bold, brave experiment rather than brilliant success.
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London reviews
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