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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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As we approach our 15th anniversary Roderic Dunnett reflects on the best production he has seen in the past 12 months
Plotters together - Lady Macbeth (Julie Godfrey) and the shatteringly schizophrenic Macbeth (Mark Crossley). Pictures: Richard Smith Photography. Macbeth The Loft Theatre, Leamington ***** Looking back, I have relished performances aplenty over the past half year, both professional and well as amateur. But my top production was, without any doubt, the Loft Theatre's Macbeth. Its standards were, simply, though that's often with the Loft, superb. Macbeth: a bold, taxing undertaking for any amateur company. But the Loft is something else. Someone said to me recently that ‘the only difference between professional and amateur companies is that the latter don’t get paid’. Sue Moore's superlative Leamington ensemble - professional standard indeed - excels at every point: direction, production values, backstage team, music and sounds, lighting – it almost always hits the jackpot. As far as all the productions I’ve had the good luck to catch by the River Leam (and there are many), The Loft has proved first-rate time and again. And that goes for its casting. It showed a striking vote of confidence in offering Mark Crossley the title role. It was a splendid decision in every way. He has a gift for portraying anything, from the sinister to the innocent, the imbecile to the vicious, the conscience-stricken to the helpless, the glum to the triumphant. Well-proven in 20th century repertoire, mastering at least two and sometimes three major roles a season, he showed phenomenal stamina as Macbeth, finesse in delivery, bringing a horrific darkness to a potentially exhausting role; deep down, shiveringly evil; yet almost sympathetic as he reluctantly acceded to his wife's (Julie Godfrey) unflinching ruthlessness; a kind of Richard III in suborning Banquo's killers; a not very convincing liar; a very confused villain emerging from an unlikely hero (celebrated in a magnificent Bloody Sergeant's speech from Peter Daly-Dickson). In this production, the design (Amy Carroll) deserved huge accolades. The ominous dark grey-brown rearstage array was immensely clever, vivid and threatening, creating a fearsome, up-thrusting, looming, unnervingly atmospheric, basalt-looking backdrop for most of the ugly action. Unchanging, suitably minimal (or maximal), placing the focus firmly on the action, props, on Macbeth himself, the Witches, the MacDuffs, a highly conniving Seyton (Jonathan Fletcher), and the entire ghastly plot.
Left to right: Joanna Stevely (1st Witch), Cheryl Laverick (2nd Witch), Helen Dodds (3rd Witch) and Mark Crossley (Macbeth) The atmosphere - aided throughout by music of striking creativity and haunting demeanour (minimalist, metallic passages, lurking like pricking electricity, and also owed to Jonathan Fletcher - the Loft's constantly unnerving Macbeth was directed, to masterly effect, by the vastly experienced, always exploratory and insightful, David Fletcher - a magnificent uncoverer of text from whatever period. Indeed it was his astute handling of Mark Crossley in the title role - patently much discussed together - and Crossley himself, always responsive to suggestion, never less than intriguing, nervy, unpredictable, which told. Once the pair of commanders has met the weird ladies - in part seductively beautiful rather than slithering, toothless, toadlike hags (Joanna Stevely, Cheryl Laverick, Helen Dodds) - with their ominous, and for Macbeth deeply dangerous utterances, arresting, unusually and subtly directed, and wonderfully kitted out presumably by ever-imaginative Helen Brady (Wardrobe), the famed warrior begins his downward spiral. As prophesied, becoming immediately Thane of Cawdor (roughly Banff today, but also Inverness, plus much of northern Scotland), he – Duncan's cousin - returns home to be coaxed by his wife ('Gruoch') to carry out the regicide, and like Richard III, usurp the throne. There is some evidence that Duncan (unlike his son and ultimate successor, Malcolm III Canmore) was a weak king, under him the country riven, while Macbeth's accession (seizure) and the peace which followed quite widely welcomed. As so often, the Loft's excellence shone forth at every point. Macbeth is of course studded with important, shivering scenes. the Witches; the murder; Banquo's killing; the sleepwalking scene; the grim finale. But in many ways the essential part - perhaps as in Hamlet - is Macbeth's guttingly compelling speeches. And these great set-pieces were not surprisingly one of the high points of this constantly gripping production. By no means only the faultless clarity of Crossley's speaking; but also his extraordinary ability to approach them in fresh, striking and original ways. "Or Heaven's cherubin, hors'd upon the sightless couriers of the air, shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, that tears shall drown the wind." He's in agony. You really believed this Macbeth was torn apart, confronted even beforehand by the unbelievable vileness of the deed. Where you expect a raised, bitter and irritable voice, Crossley frequently drops to an amazing pianissimo: this is a troubled, faltering man talking to himself. He is not primarily chilling, but vexed, pondersome, seeking, questioning (witness his inspiring dagger speech: "Art though not, fatal vision, sensible to feeling...?") Macbeth is projecting himself on to the weapon: "fatal...feeling". Even admitting he has killed Duncan's (innocent) guards Crossley is constantly fidgeting, making subtle moves and half-moves, his jitteriness conflicting with his words and pretensions, almost to the point of comedy (and Fletcher does generate some comedy in this production). The most obvious comedy comes from Elaine Freeborn's splendidly contrived Porter, a wonderful human invention, who carried off her role with a hilarity worthy of Beryl Reid, making us relish her every line and swallow each rude insinuation. An absolute hoot. A match, in fact, for the RSC's similar wheeling out of a female Porter (there, Alison Peebles), who nearly stole the show. All this adds up to a daunting body of lines. Crossley's Macbeth is drawn inexorably on, but still a human being. We feel unusually sympathetic to him, He is one of the nerviest, nail-biting Macbeths I've seen. Yet somehow - dare one say this? - most endearing.
Elaine Freeborn (Porter) So too that late speech, the one where he almost wills his own death. "She should have died hereafter" scarcely affects him: is just another inevitable fact. He pitches it so rightly, intoxicatingly: "the last syllable"; "dusty death" - death is indeed, mere dust; "sound and fury". Crossley, looking a little like Leonard Rossiter (who also played a marred Shakespearian ruler, King John) had clearly dedicated a lot of well-spent time - in crafting these lines so tellingly, and the outcome was quite superb. The story depends also on a large team of supporting artists, and here - as often - we were treated to a feast of talent. The thanes: Mark Roberts brought the dignified strength to Lennox that can help the play's stature by underlining the good. Edward Griffiths' Ross - the scurrying lordly messenger (in fact Macbeth's neighbour), imported realism by being dupable at the start, but then (by the Fife scene) startled into facing the truth. Of course the witches - the three 'weird sisters' - are essential to both the narrative and the underlying atmosphere of the play. What was so successful in this production was not just the witches' youth, but their wild flings and capers, their remarkably well-rehearsed circlings, quick reappearings and wafting away (Joanna Sevely, Cheryl Laverick, Helen Dodds. Their artfully plotted moves were fascinating: their interpretation had an inspiring freshness, and their malevolent rhyming came across stunningly well - vivid, and dangerously enticing. Peter Daly-Dickson doubled as a distinctive Macduff, never more so of course than when appraised in England of his family's murder, offset by Malcolm's extraordinary self-damning catalogue (Charlie Longman, catching all the intensity and irony of the true heir's long set-pieces). This at the Loft proved a very big scene indeed, dazzlingly well-paced by young Malcolm. "Better Macbeth than me", he asserts (Macbeth is his cousin once removed). But the Murderers' arrival at his castle in Fife, the brilliant way Shakespeare uses the pubescent boy's challenge to them "Thou liest, thou shag-haired villain!" "What, you egg?" - all the more tragic because Shakespeare has prefaced this with the classic earnest enquiries of the child ("what is a traitor?"). The purity of this scene with his mother was exceptional, the stark innocence and stark contrast. Glynis Fletcher (son) and his mother (Sophie Jasmin Bird) generated wonderful character from this delightfully perky but horrendously doomed dialogue. The assassination of Banquo (Christopher Bird impressive, commanding and strong, easily outshining the RSCs Banquo) en route to the ghoulish banquet, and the subsequent ghostings, were grippingly managed, but of equal impact was the disentanglement and hectic escape of Fleance, his son, the sire of a race of kings so feared by Macbeth. Fleance was a splendid doubling with Lady Macduff (above), both played with phenomenal sensitivity, and nobility and courage in the face of murderers. The instigator of the royal murder - Lady Macbeth (Julie Godfrey) - places wide and varied demands on its player. She has to conceive the idea, implant and ingest it ("Come to my woman's breasts."), corrupt, bully, domineer, protect, emotionally collapse, wander, imagine, some even say give birth, and expire damned. Godfrey too kept even the more aggressive sections ("And if we fail?" "We fail!") relatively unexaggerated, quiet, confidential (even "The raven itself..."), periodically directing lines to the audience rather than her husband, but by galvanising providing the upstart queen with enriched personality. Stuart Skelly - who had already given us a relatively senior Duncan - as the profoundly reflective, concerned Doctor and his touching, beautifully-spoken Gentlewoman (Glynis Fletcher once more) helped to prise out this unexpected vulnerability in her make-up. It's how Lady Macbeth should be. One remarkable bonus to the whole production was the very last sequence. Macduff has polished off the almost acquiescent Macbeth, and here we have 'Old' Siward (Jeremy Heynes, right on form; even his Old Man scene acquired greater impact than is usual), grieving for the death of his similarly named son (Simon Truscott, ironically Banquo's murderer in his previous role). This scene can seem a mere tack-on prior to Malcolm's stirring, reuniting sign-off, appointing his Earls Dukes, and "calling home our exil'd friends abroad"... near-victims of "this dead butcher, and his fiend-like Queen". Presumably including Cheryl Laverick's fled Donalbain, who deserves to be reintroduced and given a few lines at the end. But here, directed at a patient pace, the Siward (and Ross, with message again) scene made a considerable and moving impact. Without quality projection, well-engendered diction, Macbeth would be seriously diminished. There was no diminution here at the Loft. This applied to minor roles, some doubled - the snivelling Murderers, for instance, or the prescient (single) Apparition (Martin Kinoulty), or Jonathan Fletcher treating us onstage to not a sinister Seyton, but an obliging, loyal, respectful one, a bit like a decent chauffeur - as well as leads: no weak links, no failing speeches, elements which made this forcible, immensely imaginative staging so notable and memorable. Of course, the burden still rested with Mark Crossley in the title role. Agitated, fretful, a hero in pitched battle but a weakling in real life, Perhaps not surprisingly, it's Shakespeare. However neither quite the RSC's The Merchant of Venice, starring a (commanding) female actor, Tracy-Ann Oberman, as Shylock; nor their Scottish Play, which introduced a flurry of women playing men - the most I can remember in one play, ever. Duncan ('Queen Duncan', not a good idea) a bit stolid; Banquo better; Donalbain - small part to make a mark in before fearfully jetting off to Ireland - reasonable. However, best by miles in Stratford's version, a solo turn, was an utterly brilliant comic Porter (Alison Peebles): 'Gatekeeper' at Macbeth's Glamis Castle, her (his) crazed mutterings unnervingly and ironically placed by the playwright immediately after the murder. Like a whole play in one. More of the Porter later. The RSC's Merchant, with authentic, prayerful Jewish meal, candelabra and all, fielded a very impressive female Shylock. Only recently the endlessly versatile Kathryn Hunter, cast as Timon of Athens in a recent RSC production, starred as a perfect, crutch-borne King Lear (recall Anthony Sher's Richard III) at Shakespeare's Globe. Knockout. Could Cordelia be played by a chap? Their latest King John was played, magnificently, by a woman. Roderic Dunnett
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