(3 / 5)

The Watermill Ensemble’s Macbeth is a rock ‘n roll and sexy production that finds favour with its public. Under the direction of Paul Hart, Shakespeare’s plays are given a cinematic flair and engaging performances. 

Macbeth, played competently by Billy Postlethwaite, enters the scene in combat uniform and blood on his face. The military setting gives a sense of comradery, aggression, and manliness. This makes more convincing Hart’s casting according to character rather than gender.  

The production moves away from the military world to plunge Macbeth into the criminal underworld. Macbeth’s castle is a seedy hotel. The neon sign ‘hotel’ leaves out the letters O and T to spell H—EL. In the style of a mafia boss, Macbeth hands out money from a bag to professional killers to get Banquo murdered. Accordingly, Lady Macbeth is the femme fatale of a mafia boss. Reminiscent of Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface without her grace, Lady Macbeth dons a red jumpsuit dress. The witches are in overly stretched mini dresses that conjures a brothel rather than ghosts. 

The jazzy music juxtaposed to the murder of Banquo is effective and striking. Music is protagonist in Hart’s productions. It creates the scene and provides commentary on the action. Sadly, not all the cast have the powerful voices of Billy Postlethwaite and Emma Barclay, here playing Lady Macduff. The Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black lacks the necessary grit. 

Postlethwaite is a rough and tough army man. He has an animalesque energy. He is intense and captivating, but the tone of the production lacks subtlety making the soliloquies of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth a parenthesis in a Hollywood thriller. They are lustful, not sensual. They are all speaking verse comfortably but the excessive agitation puts the focus on action rather than atmosphere and meaning. 

Like Hart’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth gets stripped of Shakespeare. There is no tension between Macbeth’s murderous ambition and his guilt. Macbeth is blood-soaked from beginning to end. There is no discernible change or conflict, only a crescendo of paranoia. Emma McDonald is convincing as Lady Macbeth, but the supposedly sexy lingerie turns the tragedy into farce. Alas, for all its sound and fury, Hart’s Macbeth signifies nothing. 

I catch Billy Postlethwaite before he goes to rehearsals for a quick chat over the phone. He is playing Macbeth in Paul Hart’s production at the New Theatre, Cardiff. I ask him whether compassion plays a role in approaching a character like Macbeth. 

‘Everybody should have compassion and kindness, no matter who you are. In life, I try to do my best. In relation to Macbeth, he is someone who loses sight of those attributes while trying to gain something that he thinks he wants.’ 

It is hard if not impossible to identify with Macbeth, so how does an actor interpret the role? 

‘I look for the humanity in everybody I suppose. No one is inherently villain, so you try to work out what their motive is for doing what they are doing. People do villainous acts but they are not inherently evil. For Macbeth, it comes from a place of love, love for Lady Macbeth, for her, for what they have done together, for what they have lost. He is also a very ambitious human being. 

Postlethwaite tells me that he can recognise the love for another person and wanting to make that person happy as a driving force. He tries to ‘amplify’ emotions in his portrayal of Macbeth while making him a rounded human being. What distinguishes Macbeth is how love and ambition get twisted. 

‘Macbeth’s love for his wife and thirst for power are a powerful concoction of energy that he puts in murdering people. … That energy gets twisted.’ 

Postlethwaite’s interpretation of Macbeth is certainly energetic and intense. He tells me Macbeth is very draining. It is very physical. That physicality, in his voice as well as his bodily agility, gives Postlethwaite remarkable presence on stage. 

Billy Postlethwaite can currently be seen in Macbeth at the New Theatre, Cardiff,

https://www.newtheatrecardiff.co.uk/what’s-on/ws-macbeth/

(3.5 / 5)

The Watermill Ensemble’s take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an injection of fun, warmth, and colour. It triumphed at New Theatre with some in the audience giving a standing ovation. Loud and fabulous, it is the perfect production for all ages.  

All the cast give solid performances. Emma Barclay is wonderful as Bottom. Her voice stands out not only in power but in agility. The play’s eroticism is here blunt and humorous. This production aims to please and it does. It sparkles when it uses songs, such as I Put A Spell On You and Blue Moon, cabaret lights to frame the scene, and a contemporary ironic touch. The cast succeed in being funny without being caricatural.  

For all the fun, however, this take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream leaves Shakespeare out of the picture. The depth of the play is left untouched. I would have liked at least a nod to the plays’ darkness and symbolism. 

With A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we enter a world of doubles and illusion. The play within a play and the intermingling world of fairies and humans function as a house of mirrors that at once distorts reality and gives a truer picture of it. 

Sleep, the brother of death in Greek mythology, is used to access another reality, or, in post-Freudian terms, to travel deeper into our consciousness. The play is set in Athens, symbol of rationality, and in the woods, wild and dark. The rational day of humans is disrupted by the irrational night of the fairies.  

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is often disturbing in the imposition of patriarchal order, in the loss of autonomy of humans but also of Titania, Queen of the fairies, who is made into having sex with an ass. It is tragic and comic. It conjures a dream world that grants humans the ability to see beyond, to transcend themselves. The hero is Bottom, the holy fool who goes through a quasi-mystical experience.  

‘I have had a dream, past the wit of man to
say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go 
about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there 
is no man can tell what. Methought I was,—and 
methought I had,—but man is but a patched fool, if 
he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye 
of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not 
seen, man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue 
to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream 
was.’ (Act IV, 1)

800 years ago, Francis of Assisi travelled to Egypt to meet the Sultan Malek al-Kamil while Christian and Muslim armies fought in the Fifth Crusade, which had been called by Pope Innocent III in 2017. Francis had experienced war and had subsequently renounced his wealth and status. He was now a humble friar preaching peace in the midst of the violence. The Egyptian city of Damietta was under siege. Francis crossed the enemy lines and asked to meet the Sultan. He did not want to broker peace; rather he sought to convert the Sultan or, more likely, be made a martyr in that attempt.  

Al-Kamil was a Sufi and a man who had been seeking peace for years. Francis greeted the Sultan saying ‘Peace Be Upon You’, much like the Muslim ‘Assalaam o Aleikum’, which may have prompted the Sultan to give hospitality to Francis and brother Illuminato instead of killing them. The encounter changed Francis profoundly. It is a beautiful story of welcoming the Other, the one that is supposed to be the enemy or at least a stranger, and becomes a friend through hospitality. At its core is a deep spirituality both men had, something that is wholly absent in David J. Britton’s play Kamil and Francis. 

In Kamil and Francis, the two men interpreted respectively by Simon Armstrong and Russell Gomer exchange light banter in heaven over a game of table football, too often behaving like 21^st century football fans. The gimmick affords a few laughs but fails to capture the personality of both Francis and al-Kamil. The story is told mainly by Sister Placida (Katherine Weare) and Kamil’s interpreter Alhikma (Ri Richards), who speak directly to the audience inundating us with information.  

Kamil comes across as petty complaining about being forgotten by the history books due to his ceding of Jerusalem for peace with Christian crusaders, perhaps a clumsy attempt referring to the contemporary situation in the Middle East. The numerous humourous allusions to psychoanalytical notions, wrongly attributed to the 21^st century, soon become irksome. The anachronistic take contributes to making the protagonists and the encounter more distant and obscure. Before us are not Francis and Kamil, but two uninspired and uninspiring men. The jokes sometimes weigh down the piece. At one point, Kamil’s interpreter jokes that brother Illuminato is discovering Middle Eastern cuisine, superior to the Italian cuisine of the time, which lacked tomatoes and spaghetti. In such a pedantic text, one would expect the author to know that in the 13^th century Italian nobles delighted in the cuisine of the East and that only with the Renaissance ‘eat local’ came into fashion. 

All the cast do their best to infuse some life into a pedantic play and to convey emotions battling an emotionless text. They are committed and manage to salvage the story. It is a story that should be told, but one that requires a good ear for the earthy spirituality of Francis and the transcendent faith of Kamil. 

Kamil and Francis, produced by Theatr Cadair, premiered at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, Cardiff, Wales on the 27th and 29th of September 2019.