The Curse of Macbeth

As audiences filter into the venue, they are hissed and snarled at by masked brutes lining the corridor. Ready for action onstage are the three witches frocked in gothic lace, deathly still amidst a dry-ice haze and a backdrop of mirrors. There’s a great mood about the place, complemented by the venue’s native baroque furnishings. And as we take our seats, there is a promise in the air that this is going to be a stylish psychodrama that takes us to the dark side of Shakespeare’s darkest play.

With all this going for it, The Curse of Macbeth has the potential to be a good production. Its central aesthetic motif of mirrors has been developed resourcefully to create chilling projections of Macbeth’s growing paranoia. Some original musical compositions, sung beautifully by certain members of the cast, lend themselves well to the atmosphere and are all too sparing.

What ruins it is its dire lack of finesse and self-control. In a baffling two fingers up to all the good ideas, the Shakespearean essence of the play is mangled by an anarchic ensemble who appear to compete with the well thought out stagecraft for stage presence, over-dramatising their parts and taking to their script like a pack of wolves. The natural tempo of the language gets lost in what increasingly becomes a shouting match, and the chances for the visual metaphors to tell the story are quickly, violently stifled.

Many Shakespeare renditions struggle to stand out at the Fringe and this too, despite its strong premise, proves to be no exception.