Star rating ****
There's foul whispering abroad for much of this afternoon schools performance of Mull Theatre's look at Shakespeare's darkest couple of hours. Crisp-packet rustling, too, come to that, which at times threatens to drown out director Alasdair McCrone's bijou six-actor version, played out on Alicia Hendrick's wooden bird-house of a set. Fortunately, there's a lot more going on here than in the recent Royal Lyceum production, which appeared to drive most of the front stalls to drink during the performance itself.
There's no fear of that here as Sarah Hawarth's Witch opens the play wheeling on a doll-size pram. The hall of mirrors from which this schizoid sprite appears to conjure up the entire gory saga through some twisted adolescent fantasy re-imagines history with even more sex and death than usual. Hawarth remains onstage throughout, slipping into character as The Porter and others when fate or her own split personality requires it. Such ubiquity reminds one of Alex Norton's similarly haunting Zelig-like turn in Bill Douglas's neglected cinematic masterpiece, Comrades.
The Macbeth that Hawarth's Witch creates is littered with dark entries, from Alan Steele's multi-faceted Thane himself to Beth Marshall's quiet intensity as Lady M. Then there's the hoodied up assassins of the Macduffs and Martin Low's droning medieval score that sounds like a homage to film director Kenneth Anger's more lysergically-inclined rites. Such an elemental approach might be taken further if placed in other hands, but the framing device of Hawarth's Witch by itself restores a supernatural pulse to a play that is all too often invested with a sense of ordinariness which Shakespeare surely never intended.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article