Things dont bode well when the author of this little piece has his name spelt wrongly on the programme! I hope his agent doesnt sue. That said, the great man himself would probably have been reasonably happy with this shortened version of one of his greatest plays.
Performed by a cast of six and two musicians things got off on a somewhat Brechtian note as each performer introduced themselves by name then explained which parts they were playing. This involved much adjusting of scarves and capes when Im like this, Im Banquo, and when like this, Im the third witch, and when like this Ive accidentally caught my scarf in my flies sort of thing. As I know the play well Im not sure how effective this guide was to those who dont know their Angus from their Young Siward, especially as the play is obviously severely cut.
The verse speaking is very good, though sometimes painfully slow. Also, directors Joe Fullen and Cheryl Bradford have required their young charges to speak in English accents, which are pretty good, but render the delivery rather old fashioned, almost as if the ghost of Geilgud were conducting proceedings. There really is no reason why Shakespeare should ever be performed in RP or Standard English. Shakespeare, after all, would have heard all of his lines in his head in a Warwickshire accent.
Some of the cutting is rather odd, and actually renders parts of the action incomprehensible to anyone seeing the play for the first time. There is much ingenuity at work, though, especially in the use of live music from Lori Brewer and Matthew Prideaux, and the conjuring of the apparitions (more scarf work!) The acting is very focused if a bit lacking in passion and spontaneity, and in the title role Zachary Schulte makes as good a fist as a seventeen-year-old is ever going to make of playing a battle-hardened, grizzled Scottish serial killer.
But as he stepped slowly forward and reached the climax of the Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow soliloquy:
Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.
I got goosebumps. Not just because of those astonishing words, but because I was watching a very young man, from a land barely discovered when those words were written, bring those words back to the country in which the play is set four hundred years later; a young man who in his life will watch other actors not yet born say them again, and again, and again, for audiences who will marvel that a man wrote such words and that such a man will surely never exist again.
More magic than witchcraft.
