RSC’s Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, reviewed by Steve Newman.

As John pointed out in his recent piece for Stage Latest, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is a troublesome and dangerous piece of work, especially if the plays title is spoken within the confines of a theatre, and most dangerously if spoken within the confines of a theatre staging a production of the very bloody ‘Scottish Play’. When Hilary and I went to see an RSC production recently at the Swan here in Stratford we heard the title mentioned again and again in the foyer and the auditorium – usually by uncomprehending American students — and believe me no one did any compensatory spitting either – which is a pity, because soon afterwards the floods came, followed by Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad…

Macbeth is such a well known play – with, I would guess, at least half the world’s students studying the piece at any one time – that it’s almost impossible to write about it in any way that might make sense of the inner core of the piece, namely the quest for power at any price, including multiple murders, and the sure fact that you’re going bonkers as a result, and that crime doesn’t pay if you’re a brute of Scotsman with a complete nutter for a wife. So the best thing is to leave the play alone and concentrate on the performances.

Which I’ll do once I’ve mentioned how Conall Morrison’s direction, and his use of the Three Witches as commentators throughout the production, Witches who also became servants, and citizens (but still the Three Witches in disguise, no doubt thinking it was clever to give them more insight than Shakespeare ever intended, or had time for), which was disconcerting and messy, and, as I’ve said, too clever by half.

And if that wasn’t enough the play doesn’t start with the Witches in a ‘desert place’ but with Macbeth murdering babies (babies belonging to the Three Witches, who are representing the victims of war, which is okay, but has no place in this play) which destroys at the outset that Macbeth is a king who has to be cajoled into committing murder. That one scene destroyed Shakespeare’s intent, and our ability to follow Shakespeare’s argument that all men can be corrupted. This Macbeth is already corrupt, and a murdering bastard. And if that wasn’t enough we don’t see the Three Witches in a ‘desert place’, hubbling and bubbling, toiling and troubling, until after the interval. They belong at the start of the play. You can’t, shouldn’t, change a major theatrical cliché like that. Too clever by half, and uncomprehending of the authors intentions. All Morrison did by his ‘clever’ meddling was make a well known, well constructed piece dreadfully weak. Unless you are a director of the calibre of Sir Peter Hall or Trevor Nunn (well known meddlers themselves of course) who are on a par with Shakespeare, and understand the man inside out, don’t ever try and make him say other than he intended.

The consequence was that the actors had to try and save Conall Morrison’s inept direction; and save it they did.

Actually, most of it was down to one man – Patrick O’Kane.

This is Patrick’s debut season at the RSC, although I see he’s done his fair share of TV, including the superb ‘Waking the Dead’ with Trevor Eve, and, inevitably, that most enduring of British soaps, ‘Eastenders’.

But this young man has a natural stage presence (it’s almost impossible to count his stage credits), with a voice, personality, and emotional range, that soon stripped Morrison’s direction away like cheap paint - bringing the audience back to the play by sheer force of will — and an ability to discharge Shakespeare’s words like canon shells from the nose of a Messerschmitt ME109, so powerful was his ability to recreate the iconic nature of Macbeth: a man seemingly so powerful – with a thoroughly bad woman behind him who scratches away what goodness there is - and yet so doomed to failure that at times this production almost turned into something approaching a one man show, as no doubt did Glamis some 950 years ago.

But O’Kane’s power and sweat ( and did he sweat), which could easily have overpowered the whole production, became a stimulus to the other actors, who had to double their efforts to simply keep up. I saw the same thing happen a couple of seasons ago when fellow Irishman, Jonjo O’Neill, tore the Swan stage apart. If you get a chance to see Patrick O’Kane in the sweating flesh do so because it will be one of the most rewarding nights you’ll ever have in the theatre. He’s a star in the making.

Patrick O’Kane was most ably supported by Derbhle Crotty as Lady Macbeth, Brian Doherty as a wonderfully humane and brave Macduff, Pauline Hutton as a wholly convincing Lady Macduff; and most especially David Troughton as Duncan, who bestrode the stage with an assurance that only comes from having barrow-loads of theatrical skill; we haven’t seen enough of David on the Stratford stage recently.

And then, earlier this week, came Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad.

Now, I like the Canadian novelists work, and as a consequence was looking forward to seeing this play. It was a huge disappointment.

This production was done in association with Canada’s National Arts Centre, so we expected it to be slightly worthy in tone, which is fine, and hopefully funny and sarcastic and cynical and maybe even controversial, which is also fine.

Well, it was funny at the beginning, when the hugely talented Penny Downie, as Penelope, is seen standing beneath a top spot where, in the manner of a sophisticated stand-up comedienne, she complains about being dead, about having been married to Odysseus, about waiting all that time for Odysseus, which brought forth jollity. This was promising stuff we thought – good vintage Atwood. That is until the Maids arrived, and I realised we had a wholly female cast on our hands, which is okay by me if they’re playing females, but not if one of them suddenly becomes Penelope’s father, then another Odysseus himself, and then a supposedly nasty bunch of suitors who wouldn’t frighten a sparrow out of a hedge at two inches. That’s when it all went wrong for me, and for Hilary, and the play became little more than a badly staged drama school offering that was over worthy in tone, unfunny, over sarcastic and cynical to the point where my inbuilt cringe detector went on red alert and I thought I might have to stand up and tell them to stop it. Luckily, with the show only lasting 105 minutes, and no interval, which was a blessing, we were out of the theatre pretty quickly and heading for the Shakespeare Hotel for a much needed drink.

I’ve had this argument before about women playing men – it can’t be done, not today, not after 400 years of play making, not after we’ve seen the great duets of Burton and Taylor, Paul Robeson and Peggy Ashcroft. It can’t be done, not unless you want to make a complete ass of yourself, or you want to take the piss, in which case it’s usually confined to bad TV comedy where no one gives a damn anyway. But up there on the stage of the RSC’s Swan I don’t want to see a young woman pretending to be a man pretending to rape another young woman. It doesn’t work because the barriers between forgetting reality and imagining that what is going on on stage is real – even for thirty seconds – cannot be crossed. It’s simply bad theatre, and director Josette Bushell-Mingo, who is very good, should have known better. Had men played the men than it could have turned into a masterful piece of work.

Margaret Atwood should never have allowed this production to happen.

Picture, Joan Street.

Watching John Nettles in Midsomer Murders on television recently ( remember him as the copper, Jim Bergerac back in 1980s?) I was struck by how many murders there are per episode (around six, which if replicated across the UK would mean that at least 10% of the population are being murdered every year), and pleasantly reminded what a good actor, and thoroughly nice man John is.

John lives just outside Stratford in a converted 19th century barn which he bought when he moved from Jersey to join the RSC in the early 1990s. To see John on stage again I was reminded that he is an actor who spent most of his early career in the theatre and is not a graduate of the academy of acting known as The Bill

Some years ago I remember finding myself in the lounge of a hotel in Lancashire ear wigging a conversation John was having with a writer. Actually it wasn’t a conversation but a pitch by the writer for a ‘brilliant’ idea he’d had about a TV series that would feature a renegade policeman who drank too much, slept with too many women, drove an old battered car, and, much to the consternation of his superiors, always got his man. So highly original was this pitch that it was probably then that John decided to phone his agent and tell him to get in touch with the RSC, immediately.

As regular readers of my stuff will know (and mightily bored you are too no doubt) I was lucky enough to find myself in Sir Peter Hall’s 1995 RSC production of Julius Caesar, which featured John Nettles as a very cool, and very calculating Brutus. As a production it got some pretty bad notices, but if you were in the thing it was one of the most exciting, confusing, exhausting, and exhilarating theatrical experiences you were ever likely to have.

RSC spear-carriers have to be able to make costume changes very quickly and in Ceasar we had to go from being splendidly dressed senators to ragged citizens to Roman Legionnaires in a matter of minutes. Consequently the costumes for each change were laid out on the floor of the long narrow area behind the main stage with each of us assigned a dresser to help in the change. It was a terrifying and rather intimate experience but once we had done it a few times we could make those changes in less than thirty seconds and re-appear on stage without even breathing heavily. Because of the amount of kit required ( breast-plate, helmet, sword and shield, dagger, shin protectors etc) trying to be a Roman Legionnaire was the hardest work, and to help us look and act like soldiers Peter Hall decided early on in rehearsals to put us through a couple of weeks of British Army parade ground drill.

The drill sergeant Hall found was a dead-ringer for William Hartnell from Carry On Sergeant who, after making us line up and stand to attention (Hall had built a full size replica of the main RST stage in the Ashcroft Room above the Swan Theatre) gave us a thorough dressing-down for being the most slovenly, unsoldierly bunch of untrainable heaps of compost he’d ever come across.

“ You’re in the army now, my lads.” The sergeant informed us with an evil grin.

Every day for two weeks we were shouted at, made to march slowly, quickly, slowly and quickly, taught how to present arms, slope arms, and then how to present and slope arms on the march, how to fire in ranks (straight out of Zulu), and how to stand still in ranks, very still.

“ You moved!” screamed the sergeant. “ I said you moved, you with the disgusting ruddy beard!”

It eventually dawned on me that he meant me. I screamed back, “ Sorry!”

“ Sergeant!”

“ Sorry, sergeant!”

“ No one moves on parade. Is that clear?”

“ Yes, sergeant!” We all screamed back.

“ Now, I want to see you marching, and marching like you’ve never marched before. Wait for my order! Wait for it! Left turn! And by the left quick march! Left right, left right, left right…”

And then one night he didn’t turn up. Apparently he’d had a bit of a breakdown and had taken to his bed mumbling something about the declining standards of the British Army. But we could march. Look out Philippi!

Sixty-seven performances later I’ve given up marching on Philippi and was sitting in the wings eating a bar of chocolate and listening to the closing of the play, and John Nettles, as Brutus, saying his farewells…

BRUTUS: Farewell to you; and you; and you Volumnius…

But suddenly John came off stage in something of a flourish. But he doesn’t come off stage at that point, I thought. He smiled at me.

“ Alright?” he asked.

“ Yes, John, I’m fine. But shouldn’t you be on…?”

“ Hmm? On what? ”

” The stage…”

” Oh, fiddle-sticks, ” he said. Well, actually he said something much stronger starting with an ‘ F ‘.

We then heard the actor who was playing Clitus paraphrasing Brutus’ lines as if they were his own before running off stage himself and screaming from the wings:

“He has fallen upon his sword!”

John was still repeating the ‘F’ word as the other actors came off stage leaving a bewildered Mark Anthony to wind-up the play.

The audience probably thought it a very innovative way to end the play.

It cost John Nettles an arm and a leg in the pub that night.