The Irish Timeslooks at a version of Macbeth
Macbeth, Who is that Bloodied Man?
Belfast Festival at Queen’s
A hush falls on the crowd ranged along three sides of a large cobbled square in the docklands. The inner-city urban landscape wraps itself around: traffic hurtling past on the motorway flyover, planes circling overhead before landing at the airport across the river, the groaning of ships leaving their berths. On a high caged platform, a nun-like figure stands exposed to the elements, her outline echoed by the statue of St Joseph on the ornate tower of the church opposite. The scene is set for Polish company Teatr Biuro Podrózy's daring open-air spectacular, which pitches Shakespeare's Macbethinto the theatre of war anywhere in today's world.
Yet for all its modernity – leather-clad stormtroopers on motorbikes, tinpot generals sending men out to be tortured and die terrible deaths – there is, equally, a plethora of medieval images in the stilt-walking supernatural invaders, the flaming torches, the beheadings and ritual bloodletting.
From time to time in this visual feast the occasional gobbet of Shakespeare emerges, the sonorous eastern European accents giving the words new edge and resonance. And over it all soars the marvellous voice of the lone singer on her lofty perch. There are moments when anyone unfamiliar with the original may wonder what in the name of heaven is going on, but one is never in any doubt about the unfolding of a political struggle, where a power-crazed couple know no limits in the pursuit of their ambition. As Macbeth’s crimes mount, his physical stature diminishes until he is dwarfed by the three veiled witches, who grow from mischievous hags into towering harbingers of death.
The imagery piles up – Lady Macbeth hanging from a rope, the huge headless ghost of Banquo, the blood-soaked sheets – until the young would-be king, Fleance, whose innocent play poses a constant threat, enters the blazing castle after the dramatic advance of Birnam Wood and removes Macbeth's crown of bullets. Until Saturday JANE COYLE
