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Flabbergast Theatre’s impressionistic therapy of Macbeth would possibly alarm purists but in addition comprises some moments of actual magnificence at Southwark Playhouse
“Are you a man?”
From the second you stroll into Southwark Playhouse’s Large area, you realize that this isn’t going to be your common Macbeth. Caked in dried-out gray mud, the corporate already occupy the area in a frenzy of mime and motion, a pre-echo of what’s to come back, an unnerving scene-setting. And as Flabbergast Theatre’s work begins, it doesn’t actually resolve into something extra typical both.
A devised tackle Shakespeare’s tragedy, this ensemble-based manufacturing attracts on Flabbergast’s background in puppetry, clown, masks, and bodily theatre to create their very own distinctive interpretation, and one which shifts even from evening to nighttime, as the important thing roles are shared – I noticed Simon Gleave as Macbeth, the evening earlier than noticed director and designer Henry Maynard within the position.
Perhaps it isn’t the model to take a beginner to the play to however then once more, maybe it’s. A sure diploma of narrative readability is sacrificed right here and there however in some methods, in the event you let go of what you suppose you realize in regards to the play, there’s a route into rediscovering it via this firm’s eyes and ear, via the visceral emotion evoked in its extra magical moments.
This manufacturing is at its strongest when it carves its personal path. Evoking one thing of the astonishing work of Song of the Goat, folk-inflected music attracts us throughout the ages right into a timeless spacewith pounding drums, mesmeric ensemble motion (Matej Matejka) and textual content work and an actual sense of the eerily supernatural pervading every part with the witches ever-present and ever-manipulating.
Other points are a contact tougher, making the Porter a vaudevillian clown doesn’t make him any much less annoying tbh, and the interminable dullness of most of Act 4 Scene 3 by some means stays intact as Malcolm and Macduff drone on (or is that simply me?!).
Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes (with interval)
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Macbeth is reserving at Southwark Playhouse till eighth April
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