View from the Green Room: Blood will have blood! Macbeth!
The Shakespeare Review for schools is part of the outreach programme between the Humanities School of SETU and Theatre Royal Productions.
It’s the time of year again when thoughts quicken towards June and Waterford’s Leaving Cert students are out in force for the excellent SETU/Theatre Royal schools review of this year’s Shakespearean text, Macbeth. Waterford poet Edward Denniston plots and facilitates this excellent audience-active production that mounts and comments on crucial scenes in the Bard’s bloodiest tragedy.
The production is informal, folksy, intimate and user-friendly, and I was delighted to see the use of an onstage sound and props desk as used previously.
"Just imagine," says Edward, "that this is not a book but a play we’re watching where who says what and who hears what is as important as the message itself. Because it’s ultimately the audience that shapes its story."
This is page-to-stage stuff. Edward’s secret is that he treats his young audience as equals. Given that they know every line of the play by heart, that’s a pretty good idea. This young crowd want something special to hang onto. And that’s just what this cast gives.
Asides on the big contemporary themes of Macbeth, such as kingship, blood, treachery, deceit and the supernatural, are all commented on and the role they play in the drama explained in surprisingly detailed and yet brief asides.
The power of the soliloquy is explored as in determining how Macbeth retains audience sympathy despite his heinous and bloody crimes.
Questions are asked of the audience throughout. The Banquet Scene is staged twice – once with Banquo’s onstage ghost and once with an imagined ghost, and the audience get to vote on which is the most realistic.
The production wants to know what they thought of the Hell’s porter scene and explains the interpretation: "It involved the groundlings (the ordinary punters who stood for the four-hour production)…it brought much-needed comic relief to the unfolding horror," offers the cast in the Q&A that follows.
The essence of drama is conflict and there’s certainly no shortage of conflict in what is referred to in theatrical circles as ‘The Scottish Play’. Macbeth and his wife scheme and murder but "we know" warns Edward "that things are not going to work out".
"Dead right there, anyway," announces a student nearby.
The role of the Witches is explored in the context of the absolute belief of the Elizabethan audience in supernatural that Macbeth accidentally happens upon in the first scene upon the heath or in the Prophecies Scene where Macbeth seeks to know the future.
However, in the world of Macbeth – nobody’s on nobody’s side – just as in Chess the Musical. "So," asks Edward, "who do we believe when everybody equivocates?"
We’re warned: "Don’t believe everything you hear" and "judge the reactions and silences of the surrounding thanes… What do you think of the minor characters…which Thane is the most important?"
It might be a staged rehearsal but there’s no shortage of dramatic values here. Deirdre Dwyer directs and acting is excellent from a cast of Finbarr Doyle, Anne O’Riordan, Natalie Stringer, Susie Lamb and Adam Phelan who make up the splendid acting ensemble. The whole production makes for an all-inclusive and all-enveloping experience of Macbeth with the audience’s reaction key to its success.
The schools' Shakespeare Review is part of the outreach programme between the Humanities School of SETU and Theatre Royal Productions. There’s an excellent booklet for all the students with some thought-provoking articles from SETU lecturers on the ‘Scottish Play’. It’s a hugely popular programme for schools and the Tuesday morning reaction to this excellent production is warm and encouraging.
Blood will have blood! Macbeth!
