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Hazem Shammas’ Macbeth reaches out to the audience like some homeless figure on the street, begging and speaking to us and to himself, repeating aloud the words addressed to the ghosts in his head. Macbeth is a tragic clown, who loses touch with reality as he tries to put on different faces. He appears to be taking us into his confidence, but at the same time he is exiling himself from those he loves.  

In MACBETH, we also revel in the inevitable ‘crash and burn’ of Shakespeare’s most celebrated power couple.   Hazem Shammas has it seems, resolved to bring forth such an original take on the madness of the man the audience is held spellbound in his darkest hour upon the Playhouse stage, capturing all of us in his fear-filled escalation. It is his merciless binding to his wife, Lady Macbeth’s ambition, so brilliantly revealed when Jessica Tovey reads his letter before the King Duncan’s arrival. That her husband might have been bestowed as Thane of so much more.

The transitions and ensemble melting between action and inaction still tableaux and slow-motion response are both evocative and deftly managed, bravo the director Peter Evans, for crafting so cleverly. In the tradition of Shakespeare’s plays the alteration of time and place merges seamlessly, hiding and revealing, through the boundary of green velvet drapery, and the footlight effect moodily creating a disturbance between the audience and the storytellers and a reference to war time music halls.  

The stage design is very evocative of an earlier time where there was a looming threat of a world war. There is something earnest and mysterious about the circle of Chippendale dining chairs, at odds with the leisure of a country manor.  The 1920s costume design of Anna Tregloan and the post war overcoats keenly transform the locations so effectively yet kept the cast of Shakespeare’s characters entrapped in some otherness. In particular, the lighting of Damian Cooper’s chosen heaven’s cauldron over and again responds to the changing space and pace. Max Lynandvert, in sound design and composition, wields his mood is very effective.

I do still commend Julia Billington as a deft Banquo. A stand out performance across several roles including King Duncan and the Porter by James Lugton. The witch’s incantations do not maintain the foretelling mystery in vocal control until the players return mic’d loosening for me some expected magic. The play, as oft the case in touring Bell Shakespeare productions, is edited most effectively, and this should result in a tremendous production for schools, and I hope more young people will be compelled to ‘see’ this on the stage, as in this production it really lives.

Bell Shakespeare’s production of MACBETH, as directed by Peter Evans, is playing the Playhouse at the Sydney Opera House until the 2nd April 2023. 

Featured image : The cast of Bell Shakespeare’s Macbeth. All photos by the supremely talented, veteran thespian photographer Brett Boardman