The Bunker Trilogy: Macbeth adapted by Jamie Wilkes
Jethro Compton Presents
Venue: C Nova
Macbeth is staged as part of The BunkerTrilogy, which also takes in versions of Greek myth Agamemnon and the Arthurian cycle story Morgana. Just an hour or so
long, it takes episodic elements of the Shakespeare tragedy and transplants them into the trenches of World War I.
The real
star here is the set – a smoky, brillianthly-realised dirt-floored bunker into which the audience
squeezes to sit on low benches while the action takes place inches from their
noses. The effect of the drama at such
close quarters is devastating, although those with bad backs or particularly long
legs should probably give this one a miss.
Sam Donnelly
as Macbeth gives a a powerful performance, playing the tyrant as an
bealeaguered officer torn apart by paranoid nightmares as mustard gas swirls
and puttee-clad witches in gas masks deliver their prophecies.
At times the
drama seems to want to escape the confines of its setting, and I wonder whether
the Greek and Celtic myths might have adapted rather better to this treatment
than the more structured plot of the Shakespeare play. So much is cut that the
narrative barely makes sense, though the play is so well-known that this doesn’t
matter as much as it might. This is a nightmare ghost of a play, a fever dream
experienced in extremis.
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