Review: MACBETH, Jack Studio Theatre

I'll declare an interest - when I heard that my son was doing Macbeth for his GCSE, I was disappointed. Not the fun of Twelfth Night nor the madcap misadventure of "Dream", nor the brutal insights into human frailty of Othello nor the heroism of Henry V, but the grim series of murders in an unrecognisable Scotland packed with Thanes, whatever they are. If any play would put kids off Shakespeare, it's the Scottish one (okay, The Taming of the Shrew maybe and Measure for Measure and The Winter's Tale...).

But Macbeth it is and we're soon "double doubling and toil and troubling" with the witches in a scene imagined as contemporary dance (think The Wicker Man with more clothes) and the slide into assassinations and political intrigue begins.

At the interval, I was not best pleased with The AC Group's production. I can forgive a fringe production its lack of scenery and spectacle (and the cast's musicianship certainly made up for that) but I was disappointed in the lack of weight given to Shakespeare's words. Some speeches were rattled through at pace, others given as much feeling as a recitation of a shopping list and some just inaudible, swallowed by the cast. If fringe theatre is about two things above all else, it's about the acting and the text and both were a little lost in a space where nobody is more than six rows from the action.

Things improved considerably after the break, the cast gaining a collective confidence as the words carried the weight intended and the light and shade (okay, shade and even more shade) of the play came through much more strongly. The company is young and one can expect a certain unevenness in performance, but the transformation over the fifteen minutes interval was marked and most welcome.

William Ross-Fawcett gives us a Macbeth high on his lust for power and blood, emboldened by Amelia Clay's red clad Lady, who carries all the doubts he should have. Is there something of ex-Remainer PM, Theresa May's, thoroughgoing embrace of hard Brexit here with Boris Johnson an unlikely Lady? Well, it's Shakey, so no bets are off when you're looking to find stories within stories.

I am usually perfectly happy with gender-blind casting - after all, we have to make the imaginative jump from a South East London pub in 2017 to a Scottish castle in 1057, so what's a few chromosomes - but I'm not sure it worked in this production. Nell Hardy's Macduff lacks the heady mix of testosterone and revenge that fuels his anger in his face-off with Macbeth, and Latanya Santana Peterkin's ghost at the feast is underwhelming, neither ghostly nor feastly enough to scare anyone, least of all a King. Perhaps more in this play than in any other of Shakespeare's, gender matters and, in a blackbox space with doubling and tripling of roles, that shorthand indicator of character is a welcome hook for those piecing together plotlines and motivations.

I've seen so many productions of Shakespeare in spaces barely suited to the task by companies with few if any resources, that perhaps my bar is set unfairly high. That said, director Thomas Attwood, is bold with casting and tone, but might be bolder yet in his staging. And certainly bolder in telling the cast to speak the words with the conviction displayed in the second half of this shoestring, but generally successful, show.

Macbeth is at the Jack Studio Theatre until 22 April.

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