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.

With the RSC’s temporary, and splendid, Courtyard Theatre (built on the car park of The Other Place), now complete and open for business, I was reminded of all the fuss that blew around the town when the idea was first mooted a year or so ago, and of a letter in The Stratford Herald asking why the RSC couldn’t use an old warehouse space they already owned and had used twenty years earlier as a theatre. The answer is it was a dreadful place which has now, thankfully, been demolished.

Although I have to say that back in the mid 1980s it did make for a rather different kind of acting space, and was considered rather daring and innovative at the time to have a play, Mary, After the Queen, which is about local people, acted out in the aforementioned rusty, echoing old brewery warehouse where the actors - including the formidable Peggy Mount - had to shout every line to make themselves heard above the incredible din made by at least a thousand starlings happily chatting to each other on the roof. Verisimilitude it was not, and I have my doubts if the writer of that letter had actually seen a performance there. It was dire, it was dirty (with interval drinks available from a couple of vending machines), but it was a space that was seen as hugely significant by the Guinness drinking intellectuals, and the play as something of a working-class protest (by very middle-class actors, writers, and directors) against Maggie and her regime; and in the 1980s the RSC was on something of a mission to give the ‘Big T’ a bashing.

It all started when Angela Hewins wrote her book, The Dillen, about George Hewins, her husband’s grandfather. George was one of Stratford’s many ‘characters’ who was considered by most who met him as a foul-mouthed old devil. I only ever spoke to him once back in the 1960s. He was walking toward me, with the use of a zimmer frame, and as we passed he grabbed my left arm in a vice-like grip and growled:

“ I say, what’s the time, old man?” ( I jest - he was much more succinct).

“ Ten thirty.”

With that he spat on the pavement and told me to go forth and mulitply ( he used fewer words) and then went his merry little way as most ’characters’ do.

Angela’s book is a superb piece of social history, and beautifully written (although you won’t find George using any foul language), and it was inevitable that the RSC (then run by the fearless Trevor Nunn) would see The Dillen (with George portrayed as something of a working-class rebel) as ideal material with which to clobber the Big T.

The book was quickly turned into a play by Angela (and the RSC’s writer in residence at the time, Ron Hutchinson), with direction by Barry Kyle. It was produced in 1983 as a promenade piece that kicked-off at The Other Place, before marching around the town doing several scenes on several relevant street corners (again with Peggy Mount) before ending-up back at The Other Place. It was hugely successful, and perhaps for the first time many Stratford people were able to access theatre, and feel part of the action on those street corners, including several newer versions of George Hewins who made their own, very colourful, verbal contributions. It was all very 80s, and a bit ugghh!

Mary, After The Queen, Angela Hewins’ sequel to The Dillen was a book about the lives of George Hewins’ children, especially their working lives at the canning factory. The book was less of a success, but like its predecessor it was quickly turned into a play by the same team.

I remember, back in those dark days of the 1980s, it was a farley common RSC trick to have the actors mingle with the audience to try and get as much inter-action going as possible, with the Guinness drinking intellectuals loving it and trying to give clever replies, which fell dreadfully flat when the actors rightly ignored them. I used to hide behind my seat hoping no one would see me. God, I hate that sort of stuff.

Anyway, that sort of stuff has never been tried since, with a rather disgruntled Trevor Nunn resigning in1986 when Thatcher started putting the financial clamps on the RSC.

And poor old George Hewins was feted for a bit before he died in 1977, having his photo taken backstage at the theatre and shaking hands with the mayor, and no doubt asking him the time.

But George too had had his theatrical day back in 1912 when he was one of Frank Benson’s ‘supers’ for a season, earning between sixpence and a shilling for each performance, which was quite a lot for a builders labourer who only earned two shillings for a ten hour day. Apparently Benson liked George because he thought he looked a bit like Shakespeare and may easily have been a descendant of one of the Bard’s many bastard children. And who’s to say he wasn’t?

Steve Newman