Citizens Theatre, Glasgow
Three stars
TV monitors flash up night camera images of war at the start of Ian
MacDonald's sixty-five minute Gaelic translation of Shakespeare's
Scottish play, directed by Liz Carruthers. It's not the only modern
conceit for a production that puts just two people onstage as the
murderous couple at the heart of the play. The three witches that drive
the MacBheathas ambition are beamed in via the screens, as are the
spectral projections of Banquo's ghost. Daibhidh Walker's brutish
MacBheatha, meanwhile, arranges assorted murders from his newly
acquired throne via a mobile phone.
The result of this, as Catriona Lexy Chaimbeul's initially languid but
soon to be steely NicBheatha takes her husband's opening call from her
bed is a kind of dance, in which the pair's sexually charged alliance
is swept aside by a McBheatha more interested in power for himself
alone. Chaimbeul even sports a scarlet and black flamenco style outfit
as MacBheatha flings NicBheatha's sleeping form from his throne to
claim it as his own.
Carruthers' production, originally commissioned by Glasgow Life and
co-produced by Walker, has been developed considerably since a
thirty-minute work in progress played in the Tron Theatre's Victorian
Bar last year with just Walker onstage. Whether it will be fleshed out
even further remains to be seen, although, as inventive as this paring
down remains in a production pulsed by a martial, drum-led soundtrack,
there is probably one phone call too many.
Even so, arriving hard on the heels of Perth Theatre's macho take on
Shakespeare's play, which visits the Tron next month, Carruthers,
MacDonald and co have gone some considerable way to bring the Scottish
play home even more.
The Herald, September 26th 2013
ends
Comments