Leading man to murder

By BERNADETTE RAE

Greed, guilt, manipulation and madness are the marks of Macbeth, and the Pandemonium Theatre team is not going easy on the bloodlust in a new production of the Shakespeare classic, opening on Saturday at the revamped SiLo Theatre.

Bruce Hopkins, who plays Macbeth, and the rest of the male cast have been duelling daily with authentically heavy - as in 3kg - swords. The final gory battle is not usually played out on stage but Pandemonium is out for a cracker finale, so plays it live.

"In the end they even throw down the swords and go for the floor scuffle and the stranglehold," says director Margaret-Mary Hollins. "It's great."

Eight child actors, who play the junior Macduffs, have been practising their assassinations for weeks. "Run! The knife goes in. Bend your knees. Back straight. Scream!"

Their tutor is Lynne Cardy, one of Pandemonium's three company directors with Hollins and Kate Parker, who plays Lady Macbeth.

The production has evolved from a 20-minute piece made in 2001 starring Parker and actor Phil Brown, which focused on the relationship between Mr and Mrs Macbeth and won accolades for Parker (The Candlestick Maker and The Butcher's Daughter).

The relationship's dynamic remains a strong focus in their expanded version of the drama. "Lady Macbeth starts out as a passionate, ambitious woman," says Parker. "She is probably only 20. I get the sense of her having been stuck in that castle, waiting for something to happen.

"She has had a child - she speaks of breastfeeding - but the baby must have died. She is wounded by that and just throws herself into her husband's life, the opportunity to better their situation. She has no thought of consequence, seems capable, at first, of just blocking out what is happening and holding it all together."

An early scene has the young Lady M goading her husband into action and a bit of king-killing while the going is good. He is reluctant. She questions his manhood.

Hollins has set the fatal dispute in a formal dance of 16 people, choreographed to a Latin American beat, playing it out between elegant dips and whirls.

The three witches also have a new focus in Hollins' hands.

For a start they are serious soothsayers, not the black-clad version in long pointy hats. Beth Kayes, Penny Ashton and Ben Crowder play, respectively, a scientific mixer of potions, a collector - of herbs, toads and children's fingers - and a childlike channeller.

In their expanded role they appear throughout the play as magical stagehands, setting things up but not just on a physical level. You get the feeling, says Hollins, they are manipulating things to achieve their own plan - to drive Macbeth to destruction.

Perhaps the greatest liberty Hollins has taken with the play is to cut the lengthy political speeches and to convert much of the story-telling dialogue into direct action.

"After poring over a selection of filmed Macbeths I decided there was just too much talking," she says.

So it is action all the way and the audience will be a big part of it. With the shabby old SiLo gutted for renovation, this Macbeth will use a transverse stage - a column of space through the theatre's centre with just two rows of seating to either side.

"The audience will feel they are in the play, in intimate contact. They will be looking through the actors to a shadow of the audience on the other side," says Hollins.

A mobile rock complete with cosy bonfire, a small wheeled platform on which Lady Macbeth can glide, dreamlike, when reading a significant letter, and a gloriously medieval witch's cauldron on wheels promise interesting stage play.

There is also an evocative original score by Mark Chesterman.

Performance

* What: Macbeth

* Where & when: SiLo Theatre, August 9-Sept 7