O, full of scorpions is my mind

What: Macbeth by William Shakespeare

Where: Royal Shakespeare Theatre (RST), Stratford Upon Avon

Who: Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC)

When: August-September 2023

Could things get any worse?

An old record by the Who echoed with the words:

“Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss”

Here at the RSC, the same problems that have haunted recent productions look like they are going to be around in the new era. Gregory Doran’s time at the helm was rather mixed. Now as we come out of an interim period, with Daniel Evans and Tamara Harvey as co-artistic directors, things have really not changed. This production of Macbeth is diabolical, and I don’t mean devilish.

Indeed, Greg Doran’s most recent turn as director (on Cymbeline) was quite, quite marvellous. But here we are back in a quite different playpen. The casting is riddled with casting decisions where characters have changed gender for no apparent reason. The play seems to deal with issues which could not have been relevant in Shakespeare’s day, and worst of all a chunk of the play is removed to be replaced by a stand-up comedy sketch written by a modern comedian.

There have been worse productions at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in the last 18 years, but only marginally. However, none of them would have the audacity to remove a complete scene (The Porter’s Scene), and replace it with a scene written by Stewart Lee, and performed by Alison Peebles.

We are told this has been done because a modern audience wouldn’t get the jokes. Surely, they don’t get the subtleties and undelying themes, but we only guess at those anyway. I recently included the Porter’s scene in my one man show, and the audience certainly “get” the spirit of it.

Shakespeare is the best playwright who ever lived, so now let’s excise a scene (one option), and replace it with a scene written by a much lesser talent (really should never be an option).

On the occasions I was there, the theatre was quite full at the beginning. There were substantially more empty seats after the interval.

Anyway, let’s pick over the bones.

The cast on the whole was reasonably strong. Occasionally, the sense of a line was lost because of the way it was “read”, verbally punctuated in the wrong places or with flat intonation and little expression.

Reuben Joseph (Macbeth) was solid. Valene Kane (Lady Macbeth) swung between the erotic and the erratic. For novelty’s sake she was given a forename (Gruach).

Other novelties? Duncan, King of Scotland becomes Duncan, Queen of Scotland – changing gender but retaining the forename.

His children, Malcolm and Donalbain are played by women (Therese Bradley and Shyvonne Ahmmad). Banquo is a woman.

Lady Macduff (Emma King) gains a forename (Anne). Seyton (pronounced Say-tan) is blended with The Porter to become one character. Various other characters are given forenames for no apparent reason. The weird sisters are played by two women and a man, but still referred to throughout as sisters.

Now all of this shuffling could no doubt have been used to show some deep underlying themes that the director felt she had found in the text, but trust me nothing is revealed.

The music is the best thing about the production with Annie Grace (pipes), Elinor Peregrin (bass trombone), Anna Carter (tuba), Aaron Diaz (sousaphone), Kev Waterman (percussion), and Alasdair Macrae (saw/hammered dulcimer) building an eerie resonating set of sounds on Claire Windsor’s soundtrack.

There was a production of Troilus and Cressida a number of years ago with a New York company and an English company performing together, with a skill level that suggested they had never met before, that was worse than this, but there haven’t been many other ill-conceived ones to match this.

Do yourself a favour. Give it a miss.