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The
Edinburgh Fringe
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Fringe 2005 Reviews (48)Macbeth Killing Time
There are four productions of Macbeth at this year's Fringe, plus a further four which are based on the Scottish Play, which must make it the most performed (in some form or another) play in Edinburgh this year. I am always suspicious of plays which are "based upon" Shakespeare: they rarely have anything new to offer and are either a transparent cover for the director's desire to play around with Shakespeare without upsetting the purists by calling it a version of the play, or they use the play as a starting point for something completely different. There are no musical Macbeths this year, thank goodness, said he, remembering a ghastly piece at Southside in the late 90s. Frank Bramwell's play, however, is that very rare bird, a genuinely unusual take on the play, which remains true to the spirit (and the words) of the original whilst making us question out assumptions about it. Macbeth is in limbo and has been for 400 years (we are consciously talking about Shakespeare's character here, not the real Macbeth whom, the play reminds us, Shakespeare vilified unjustly, as he did Richard III. For the first ten minutes or so we watch and listen as he suffers the toments of such a long solitary confinement without sleep (for, as we all know, Macbeth did "murder sleep"). Then two clown-like characters, Delos and Kramm, arrive. They are waiting for a phone call so they can do their job, but what that job is and who the phone call is from is not clear. Or, at least, it isn't clear until it actually comes. They are to conduct Macbeth's trial, something which has been forgotten about due to a bureaucratic oversight. And so begins our look at his story as the apprentice, Delos, takes on the role of defence counsel while we, the audience, are to be the jurors. I won't reveal what happens - that would take away the impact of the play - but we are forced to re-evaluate our reactions to the play in a very compelling and, at times, even amusing way. It's a very original and clever piece of work, well performed by the cast of three: Alan Groucott (Macbeth), Laura Lee (Delos) and Maggie Grace (Kramm) under the tight direction of Victoria Grainger. Peter Lathan Swift Guy Masterson is probably best known to Fringe-goers of recent years as the director of the Fringe "biggies" - Twelve Angry Men two years ago and The Odd Couple this year, but for many more years he was one of the biggest producers in Edinburgh in August, bringing innumerable exciting shows to the Assembly Rooms. He directed quite a number of them, as well as a number of others which appeared in other venues. Swift, which he directed, is a return to his old ways, as it were, and a welcome return it is too. He is a very effective director, able to get the best out of his actors, and has a real sensitivity to the work of writer/performers. He proves it again with Swift, a one-man play made almost entirely from Jonathan Swift's own words as found in letters, pamphlets, essays and poems as well as his most famous work, Gulliver's Travels, together with some comments by his contemporaries and a few pieces of modern narrative to guide the original texts. The play is set just after Swift has finished writing his will, at a time when he was on the downward slope, unhappy, feeling isolated and on the verge of insanity. Jeffrey Mayhew captures the edginess of the man at this time, swinging between the lucid vitriol which gave raise to his masterwork (today, alas, regarded as a book for children, but actually an attack on his contemporary political scene) Gulliver's Travels and the insanity which was to claim him not too far in the future. Peter Lathan Astrakhan Winter Last year the ADC chose a very obscure, difficult but fascinating piece, Torben Betts' Five Visions of the Faithful, as their Fringe offering. This year they have brought an equally demanding play, albeit in a different way, Welsh playwright Dic Edwards' Astrakhan Winter. It's a play in 21 scenes which demands your attention and raises many questions which it resolutely refuses to answer. "Why does X do this?" we find ourselves asking at a number of points in the play and theer is no answer, excrpt that he does. This would seem like a recipe for disaster but the dialogue (or, often, monologue) is so compelling that this lack of motivation doesn't matter: we are driven forward, fascinated. It is set in the UK and an unnamed Balkan country during the 90s and focuses on a British history lecturer, Walker, who becomes a leader of the revolution, and whose personal, domestic life becomes entangled in the revolutionary events and their aftermath. What we see is a series of snapshots from numerous points of view which show us something of the man Walker and how his intervention causes confusion, slowly revealing the fact that his view of what he achieved - and, indeed, the views of the dead revolutionaries who speak to us from beyond the grave - is far from the reality, and its consequences are tragic, not so much for Walker but for all those who are touched by these events, whether at the time in the Balkans or later in Britain. The play is very tightly directed by James Dacre, who was responsible for Five Visions last year, and the production values are very high. The set is deceptively simple but the very effective lighting plot is just the opposite, with over 200 lighting cues in the one hour of the production. The complexity of the lighting adds depth to the make-up of the dead revolutionaries which gives them an other-worldly look. The blocking is tight and precise and the original music, played live, supplements a complex soundscape. It's a student production but it is only the youth of the performers that give that fact away: in all else it is thoroughly professional, and at a very high standard. Peter Lathan |