Irish Times critics review Macbeth at the Olympia Theatre in Dublin and Dracula at the Samuel Beckett Theatre Dublin.

Macbeth

Olympia Theatre

Macbeth is the shortest of Shakespeare's tragedies, and it should feel ever shorter than it is. Part of its dramatic genius is the dizzying sense that half a lifetime is compressed into a few breathless days.

Logically, the action seems to take a very long time. At the start, and in the early scenes before Duncan's murder, Macbeth seems to be a youngish man - physically vigorous, bursting with unfulfilled ambitions, thinking of the children he hopes to have. At the end, he is mourning the absence of "that which should accompany old age". Dramatically, however, the play has the opposite effect. It rushes from crisis to crisis with a headlong sense of panic. Civil war one minute, assassination the next, another murder, a haunting, more murders, another civil war. The rapid succession of events seems to leave Macbeth's mind reeling. He has no time to think, only to react. A good test of a production of Macbeth, then, is whether it leaves us breathless. Does time speed up?

For all its virtues, Michael Caven's production for Second Age and Theatreworks, feels slow, at times cumbersome. Anxious, perhaps, to serve a Leaving Cert audience by making the action clear and pronouncing the speeches with extraordinary deliberation, it sacrifices the essential velocity.

Caven does some interesting things. His staging borrows heavily from Japanese theatre, using minimal props and presenting the Weird Sisters through masks and ritualistic movement. Some of Sinead Cuthbert's masks are less successful than her excellent costumes, being unfortunately reminiscent of Star Trek. Some of the witches' movement is awkward and heavy. But there is, nevertheless, a convincing presentation of the supernatural dimension of the play.

Ferdia Murphy's spare set creates up to five playing areas at any one time, allowing the play's complex interactions between private and public speech, formal rhetoric and confidential asides, to unfold impressively.

Caven uses this minimalist aesthetic to create some memorable images. A cradle, symbol of Macbeth's obsession with posterity, presides over the action. David Gorry's excellent account of the Porter makes brilliant use of a simple mop.

Olwen Fouéré's Lady Macbeth utters her "unsex me here" oath while her husband's fateful letter, informing her of the Weird Sisters' prophecies, burns in the bowl before her. The same bowl returns in the sleep-walking scene, the subtle visual echo adding to the poignancy of her collapse.

This kind of visual intelligence pays off best in a fine account of the often problematic dumb show that the witches stage for Macbeth's second visit. It becomes rather over-active in the same scene, however, when the witches dress Macbeth as an Elizabethan magician, a conceit whose brief attractions are overplayed when he remains in this garb for much of the subsequent action.

The greatest advantage of the stark Japanese style, moreover, is thrown away. The stark, open spaces ought to allow for a real fluency in the playing. Instead, there is too little quickness of mind and facility of speech to take advantage of the opportunities for an intense, fleet-footed production. Aside from Fouéré and Gorry, the performances lack subtlety.

In a play that is completely dominated by its protagonist, Denis Conway's Macbeth sets too monotonous a tone. He relies very heavily on his robust presence and the powerful projection of his deep voice, each of which is, in its own way, impressive.

But having established that Macbeth is a loud, strong man, he plays essentially the same note throughout. His slow, sometimes laboured enunciation of the speeches makes Macbeth seem ponderous. This in turn makes the play, for all its vivid incident, oddly undramatic.

As a didactic presentation of Macbeth that spells everything out with great clarity, this one can't be faulted. Getting your head around Macbeth is one thing, setting your head spinning with the buzz of the Shakespeare drug is quite another. In doing the first but not the second, this production doesn't inhale. (Runs until March 5th)

Fintan O'Toole

Dracula

Samuel Beckett Theatre, TCD

There is really only one way to adapt Bram Stoker's Dracula for the stage, and that is to treat it with deadly seriousness; no insider gags or tongue-in-cheek smarts. Liz Lochhead's version pays it that compliment, and so does the TCD School of Drama, presenting the final year of the Professional Acting Programme. The result is a solid entertainment well geared to the talents of the aspirant thespians.

Director Jim Culleton, like Stoker a Trinity alumnus, conducts the whole with the authority of a maestro. In Sinead O'Hanlon's set design he has the benefit of a flexible and atmospheric arena in which to realise his vision.

The production is in the round, on a flag-stoned area with a raised rectangle in the centre, surrounded with tall silver birches. This becomes an asylum, a bedroom, Dracula's castle, a tomb and more.

The main characters and events of the original are preserved here. Jonathan Harker goes to Transylvania to do business with a mysterious nobleman, and is drawn into his web. A madman waits in an English cell for the coming of his ¨master. The tragic Lucy is drawn into the world of the undead, and Dr Van Helsing comes to the rescue with his knowledge of the vampire, and of the means to vanquish it.

This classic melodrama does not place too great a strain on acting ability, but it remains essential to walk the tightrope and not tumble into near-farce. The cast do this with considerable success, and the direction helps them with skilful touches. There are no duds among them, and a few show promise of serious accomplishment ahead. Among these it is fair to name the leads of Patrick Ryan (Dracula) and Gavin Logue (Von Helsing), who seize their opportunities.

This is good, atmospheric theatre. (Runs until Sunday next; booking at 01-6082461)

Gerry Colgan