Shakespeare meets the Blair witch - Macbeth. Pistachio Choice at the Drayton theatre

I jumped at the chance to review another production of Macbeth as a chance to refresh the play in my mind as we're starting rehearsals for Breakfast Cat's production this week. Here's the review I wrote for Remote Goat.

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I've seen Macbeth three times in the last year and this was certainly the most immersive. The audience sits on three sides of the space on a single row. This meant we were all on the front row which not only makes the ticket price an absolute bargain but means you feel very involved in the action as you're almost sitting on the stage. This effect was compounded by many scenes where actors appeared behind the audience benches on stage right and left, veiled by a black curtain which became semi transparent when the area beyond it was lit. This device was used very cleverly for the visions to appear to Macbeth when conjured by the witches.

I particularly liked the staging of the banquet scene where members of the court appear behind the curtain stage left accompanied by restaurant noises. Lines involving the court were delivered in the restaurant space, but when Macbeth was disturbed by Banquo's ghost he emerged out into the main space to be berated by his wife out of view of his guests, as if they had come out of the restaurant. This set the scene in a way the audience could relate to which was much more effective and contemporary then the usual theatrical asides taking place in the same room.

This production excelled at creating atmosphere. As we arrived the simple black stage was set with a figure covered in a white sheet lying on a large metal trolley. In the first scene the weird sisters emerged in darkness wearing white nightdresses and large glasses. They were lit only by torches which they shone on each others' faces. Many scenes through the play were lit in this way which gave a distinct feeling of unease and rising fear and panic, which reminded me of watching a creepy film like the Blair Witch project. When this first scene ended with the bloodied captain awaking with a scream I jumped in my seat.

The cast of 6 played the full contingency with full costume changes very well. Different characters were also given very distinct accents which helped distinguish them very clearly from each other and I didn't feel there was any confusion about what was going on. Because actors were constantly rushing on and off the stage as different characters the pace of the play was fast and high energy which added to the feeling of adrenaline created by the atmospheric staging. We felt a bit like we were at the London Bridge experience with characters emerging from ever direction.

The lighter comedy moments which would have broken this atmosphere were skated over somewhat. The Porter, played by Michael Loughton, was not played as comically as usual which I think was a good decision in the context of this production. Loughton also gave us a regal and likeable Duncan who I felt sorry to see dispatched and an excellent murderer

This was a real ensemble production and I felt all the actors really excelled in their roles. Tim Wyatt as Macbeth was particularly impressive though, his reactions and descent into madness were compelling.

Emily Woodward was also particularly good, giving very distinct performances. I loved her frantic and heart wrenching Lady Macduff, followed seconds later by a calm and measured Malcolm after a swift backstage costume swap. Her face as Malcolm when she was informed of her father's death really stuck with me.

I also really liked Charlotte Donachie who played the difficult 'I've come to give you some exposition' roles with aplomb and gave real character to Rosse without detracting from the main action.

Rebecca Powell was a rather less sympathetic Lady Macbeth than I have seen recently, a more traditional unmitigatingly hard and controlling spouse. I felt that her gestures and reactions were a little overplayed for a smaller theatre space where we were right in front of her, and this didn't quite go with Wyatt's performance which was more expertly reigned back. I actually enjoyed her performance more as the weird sister and as the young Fleance where her energetic style brought life to the characters. There was a very nice moment though, when Macbeth is 'crowned' at Scone, usually not depicted on stage. Rank and title were represented by pin badges on the lapel and we were shown Lady Macbeth emphatically forcing the badge onto Macbeth's lapel watched by Rosse. I thought this, and other little moments which were occasionally added were great, added to the pacey feel of the play and gave us some extra insight into the characters.

The one think which I thought let down this production was the costumes. There was a strange mixture of contemporary and more traditional dress which was confusing and made me feel like the director had not made clear decisions about where and when this was set. For example Malcolm made a nod to the military with a modern blue military style coat, while Macduff wore khaki green army uniform complete with beret. And while the Weird sisters looked suitably creepy in their nightdresses and glasses, this Psychoville look did not tally with Macbeth's simple suit. Overall it felt like the costumes had been picked for convenience in terms of costume changes rather than thought about as an important part of the visual theme which was a shame when the staging and lighting were so spot on.

We particularly disliked the beret which William Reay wore as Macduff which was an irritating distraction from his otherwise very moving and charismatic performance. His final fight with Macbeth was brilliantly choreographed and dramatic. It was a great decision to lose the knives and have them punching and kicking each other which as such close quarters was far more disturbing and realistic than a knife battle would have been.

If you like your Shakespeare gripping and atmospheric, keep an evening free to go and see this, you will not be disappointed.

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What I didn't say on Remote Goat because I thought it would be pretty irrelevant and because the review was already far too long and rambling was: Is it me or is Lady Macbeth getting younger? I have seen 3 Macbeths in the last year, not one of them had a Lady Mac over 30.

A couple of years ago at the British Shakespeare Association's Hamlet conference in Denmark, Trevor Nunn told us he thought Hamlet was not 30, as the gravedigger tells us but younger. Look at the text carefully, Nunn argued, and it's obvious that Hamlet is a young student, early 20s max. Some scholars, and many actors (who like to still have a chance of playing Hamlet well into their 50s) disagree. Which is a shame because I'm inclined to agree with Trevor Nunn on this one.

But I'm seeing the opposite effect with Lady Macbeth. She's getting younger and younger because younger actors want to have a go at it and are not inclined to wait until their 40s. When I auditioned for Breakfast Cat's Macbeth I thought I'd be too young to be considered for the plumb role. But as it turns out the excellent Helena Natrass who has landed the role is the youngest Lady Mac yet, barely old enough to drink in the pub we rehearse in. Twenty six would be considered a pretty old Lady Mac these days. How depressing.

Now, many of these Lady Macbeths are excellent. But their youth means the underlying tensions in the relationship between Shakespeare's most ambitious power couple are skated over. Lady Macbeth has lost a child in the past "I have given suck, and know how tender 'tis to love the babe that milks me", and Macbeth's main preoccupation for most of the play, once he becomes king, is with lineage. The weird sisters as quite clear that Banquo's progeny will inherit the throne. No children for Macbeth. This is what drives him to murder his friend. With this aspect of the play played down, the productions necessarily put more emphasis on the act of murdering Duncan corrupting Macbeth's soul and piece of mind and sending him mad, driving him to further murders.

Unfortunately this theme of Macbeth's "eternal jewel" being warped beyond repair by the act of murder is actually much more feasible to Shakespeare's devout Elizabethan audience. Today's secular audience have seen too many serial killers and psychopaths on the news and in films who murder and manage to present a perfectly normal facade to the rest of the world to entirely buy into this idea. Meanwhile, the childless couple driven by grief to mad and violent acts crop up on Eastenders every other Christmas.

I'm not saying Duncan's murder should be played down as a catalyst to Macbeth's unravelling. There are still examples of modern audiences being affected by damage to a character's soul. Andy pointed out to me when we were discussing it at the theatre that Macbeth is comparable to J.K. Rowling's Voldemort splitting his soul to create Horcruxes. And we certainly still squirm at Dorian Grey so we still understand the concept of someone who has done evil things being tainted. I just feel that this as a single or main explanation lacks the depth you get from a combination of a character's worldly worries for the future of his lineage, his human instincts to love and protect a family plus the supernatural concerns that he has done something abhorrent to his immortal soul.

Because of this there are two Macbeth productions I'd like someone to produce next. The first is a contemporary production with an older couple which puts the question of childlessness and succession back centre stage.

The other version I'd REALLY like to see is one of these younger Lady Macs who is visibly pregnant. Imagine the highly charged paranoia of the play, with this added dimension. How gruesome to hear Lady Macbeth talk about dashing a baby's brains out when she is pregnant. It would be like that feeling of disgust and despair you get when you see a pregnant woman smoking on the street, only more so. How much more terrifying for Macbeth to hear that he is to have "a fruitless crown" when he is expecting his first baby, after his last baby died. That's the kind of stuff that sends characters mad in this day and age. More gruesome, more modern, more innovative. Someone do that please. And let me know if you do so I can come and see it.

How I learned to love performance art

There are those of you who will think I am raving but I just wanted to admit to you all that actually, I love performance art/ conceptual performance/ surreal theatre or whatever you want to call it.

Now OK I don't think I'm ever going to want to go and see Franco B bleeding all over the floor or Carolee Schneemann pulling scrolls out of her lady garden. But I love going to scratch events like Show Us Yer Bits (curated by GetInTheBackOfTheVan) which I went to last week because my friends Sedated by a Brick were performing a first peek at some of their new work.

Sedated By A Brick presented some really poetic work which reminded me a bit of doing Burglers at school (remember that? "What have the vandals done with my sandals?") They need to do some work to combine their new work with language with the impressive physical work they have done before but I think they will work this out and create something strong and affecting if not particularly comprehensible.

Next up was Sarah Bell who presented a really cute piece about her revisiting a film about the moon landings which she loved as a child when she wanted to be an astronaut. I thought this was very affective because it made me feel awe and wonder about men landing on the moon which I don't really feel normally. It also had loads of room for her to explore further the ideas about forgotten childhood dreams, nostalgia and media.

Lastly we saw a very funny piece by tatty-del exploring their competitive/bitchy relationship with each other. I thought this was an honest piece which I found very authentic. Some of the scenarios they played out I recognised from my own relationships with my family and female friends which made me think about myself and how I interact with people.

So an enjoyable evening all round. If you're still sceptical about going to see any theatre that doesn't have a playwright's name on the poster, here are a few reasons to give an alternative type of theatre a try.

1) If you enjoy surreal comedy like the Boosh or Noel Fielding's Luxury Comedy there is no reason to assume you won't enjoy a similarly weird experience in a theatre.

2) I've had a depressingly large number of people in work and on dates ask me what my star sign is recently. Obviously people who 'believe' in star signs either are really stupid, want you to think they are really stupid, or have cunningly turned their brains off in order to avoid dealing with large difficult questions and help them to reduce the world to small manageable chunks. This is a talent I find both dangerous and enviable. If, like me, you occasionally find yourself so choked with the surrounding stupidity it is hard to breathe, I guarantee you will find some challenging theatre created by people who are really doing something with their brains very refreshing.

3) People who make this kind of theatre are lovely people who want to know what you think. You might expect them to be arrogant, annoying, North-London-Hipster type people and ok some of them are. But the majority in my experience are crafting their work to communicate with the audience member in the most effective way possible. They are far more open to suggestions and constructive criticism that any other type of artist, playwright or musician that I have ever met.

4) Don't knock it until you've tried it. I took my friend Faye to see DV8 a few years ago, nervous that she would hate it and think I was mental. She turned to me when the lights went up and said 'That was the most amazing thing I have ever seen.' Now we regularly go and check out contemporary physical theatre/dance productions at Sadlers Wells and elsewhere and have had many more amazing evenings.

5) Nothing will ever make you sound more impressive at dinner parties than up-to-date knowledge of cutting-edge theatre.

I'm not saying you will like everything you see. Some of it is pretentious twaddle which will leave you cold. But I could also say that of many Shakespeare adaptations.

Thanks to Rob for coming with me to Show Us Yer Bits. I think he enjoyed it.

On the radio

On Sunday I was a guest on the Nat Nollid show hosted by the lovely Rebecca Burge on ONFM.

The main guest on the show was Justus Emman, a fascinating guy who writes books and was on the show to talk about Voodoo. This meant that as well as theatre I had to talk about my opinions on Voodoo and its practice in the UK.

So for interested parties I include below a cut down version of some of what Mr Emman was saying, with my contribution towards the end:

Discussing Voodoo on the Nat Nollid show with Rebecca Burge by Ellie Dawes

And here is a recording of our discussion of this blog, theatre and what to look out for on the stage in 2012!

Ellie Dawes discusses theatre 2012 on the Nat Nollid show with Rebecca Burge by Ellie Dawes

I talk about this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Haymarket's Tempest and The God of Soho at the Globe. I also naturally plug Breakfast Cat Theatre's upcoming version of Macbeth!

The Twitter account I'm talking about, which I've set up to promote Macbeth, can be found here, please follow and retweet it!

Please forgive my clumsy editing! You can listen to the whole show, with the full fascinating discussion with Justus, on Rebecca's website.

52 - Aladdin, Ashcroft theatre, Croydon

52 plays!! I realise this might lose impact as I am blogging a few days after seeing this last production of 2011 on New Year's Eve. But believe me dear reader, I saw this (and The Borrowers) in December 2011. Which makes my challenge complete.

I was pleased to see a panto as my final play. You might think a panto is slightly less worthy than some of the other plays I have seen over the year. You are wrong. Pantomime is the greatest example of British culture I know.

Try seeing a Pantomime outside of the UK and you will run into problems. Then try explaining Pantomime to a German, an American, an Indian and witness the look of bemusement.

To me the clever puns, cross-dressing, colour and nonsense you see in a pantomime demonstrate the wit, diversity, exuberance and eccentricity that make up our national identity.

Look back in time and you can find the pantomime's ancestors in mummer's plays and even mystery plays. Look forward and find its children in modern films like Shrek (people think the idea of having innuendo and cultural references for the grown-ups in children's films is new. I'd say American cinema is just catching up.) Naturally as a leftie British person I usually treat patriotism as an embarrassing and rather dangerous disease but actually I do think that our literary and cultural heritage is something we can be proud of.

Now usually I'd advocate forgetting the celebs and patronising the smallest local pantomime you can find for maximum community feeling and naughtiness. But I did think this Aladdin was particularly good in terms of sheer volume of cheesy jokes. My favourite:
"I just saw Michael J. Fox down the garden centre"
"How did you recognise him?"
"He had his back to the fuchsias"

I also thought the set was lovely and glittery, the dancing impressive and the actors full of the essential energy and mirth. Wishy Washy (played by that geeky new bloke from Hollyoaks) was the star of the show, interacting really well with the kids, delivering exposition at roughly the speed of sound and jumping around the stage like a mad thing.

Something I would have liked to see improved somewhat would be the costumes. Pantomime dame costumes can be really magnificent and silly and although Twanky's were colourful I thought they could have been slightly more inventive and daft. The exception to this was the cool ming vase dress 'she' wore in the finale complete with a hat that looked like a lid so she could shrug her shoulders and draw her head in to make her head disappear. That was awesome.


I feel a bit sad now my 52 plays resolution is complete. Obviously I'd like to go to the theatre a lot in 2012 too, but with a new resolution to save some money and go on holiday to India I suspect my theatre trips might become less frequent. When I see something particularly great or awful, I'll definitely keep posting on this blog, it has been nice to practise writing down my thoughts and ideas.

Anyone considering upping their experiences in 2012, I can't recommend the 52 plays idea enough. I can honestly say it is one of the best things I have ever done. I feel like I know much more about theatre than I did 12 months ago, I see plays in a wider context and have a far better idea of what kind of theatre I really love. Instead of setting yourself the usual dull dieting or sporty challenge this year, why not embark on something that will improve your mind instead of your body? Watch 52 films, see 52 plays, read 30 books (52 books seems a bit much to me), go on 52 dates, whatever. Choose something you are passionate about and learn more about the thing that you love.

Above all my lovely blog readers, I hope you find a way to have a happy, constructive and successful new year. Noone else can make this happen but you.

51 - The Borrowers, Nuffield Theatre, Southampton

The Borrowers was everywhere this Christmas, bemusing as the last I heard of it was when I read the books and watched the BBC series as a child. Daisy says it's because people our age who enjoyed the old BBC series have grown up and had children of their own and want them to enjoy The Borrowers too. Surely some mistake as I am FAR TOO YOUNG for anything I liked as a child to have come full circle. *Resolutely ignores 1980s revival*.

I liked the new adaptation on the TV this Christmas, but for me there was a lot more magic to be found in this theatre production. For one thing, they kept the story set in the 1950s which made it much more nostalgic, and for another it was live theatre which is always that bit more magical than the TV.

I wanted to see The Borrowers because it struck me as a great challenge to produce on stage, what with half the characters being a few inches tall. This production tackled this brilliantly, with tiny puppets and oversized props. One of the most magical moments came as we saw on one size of the stage the fully sized human boy passing dolls furniture into a small hole in the floorboards which simultaneously in another area of the stage Pod, Arietty and Homily received from above fully sized versions and arranged them in their home.

Other favourite moments included the wasp who appeared much larger than the Borrowers and darted around the stage in a very waspish manner by wearing those bouncy leg stilt things like paralympic runners wear (no-one in my office can agree on what these are called). Lunging at them with a large curly sting he held in one hand he was both fearsome and comical, the ideal children's theatre monster.

I also loved the giant boot the borrowers hid inside, the set really was incredibly impressive.

There were a couple of oddities about this production, one being that the gardener, played by an excellently hammy older actor, was constantly referred to as a young boy by the other characters. We were not sure whether this was a combination of creative casting and lazy script editing or a joke that none of the audience seemed to get.

The other strange thing was the half songs the characters occasionally started but didn't finish. When Arietty started singing at the beginning I thought 'great, it's a musical' but then after a few lines she stopped and continued acting as if the song hadn't happened. This happened a couple of times and left me a bit bemused.

Despite these occasional moments of strangeness this was a triumph of clever stage craft and a charming and Christmassy family show. I hope other companies are brave enough to take on The Borrowers for future Christmas productions.

50 - The Collaborators, National Theatre

This is transferring from the Cottesloe to the Olivier (the larger theatre in The National) and is well worth a trip to see. Go on, go and see a new play. It's by John Hodge (screenwriter of Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, The Beach).

I was surprised by how funny and surreal this play was, considering the content (in Moscow, 1938, writer Mikhail Bulgakov (Alex Jennings) is commissioned to write a play about Stalin to commemorate his 60th birthday).

The play is also more subtle than I expected. Yes, it has something to say about art controlled by the state. But it's also a skilful portrait of an artist who gets lost in his work.

It is worth seeing this just for the amazing darkly comic performance of Simon Russell Beale as Stalin. Initially affable and light hearted he offers to write scenes of Bulgakov's play for him, but in exchange Bulgakov should take over some of his own work; signing papers and making decisions. Things spiral into a nightmare as Bulgakov unwittingly agrees and inspires Stalin to commit more and more terrible atrocities on the people of Russia.

Go and see this, particularly if you enjoyed Every Good Boy Deserves Favour at the beginning of 2010 which was on a similar topic and was stunningly brilliant. And, of course, the White Guard in July 2010 which I missed because I am an idiot.

49 - The Crucible, Chichester players

I have never seen a production by The Chichester Players and was really impressed, not just by the excellent production but also by the ticket sales! It was a reasonably long run and when we went, on the last night, New Park was full to bursting.

It's quite possible word had spread through the run about how good this production was. The acting was really first rate, and the director, Richard Brookes, knew what he was doing, framing even difficult scenes with loads of people on stage at once really beautifully.

All three of us, even my sister who claimed before the play that she "didn't like the crucible" were absolutely riveted. When we emerged from the theatre someone on front of house mentioned that it was a long performance and we were genuinely amazed to find we had been watching this for three hours.

If I had a criticism of this production it would be that I personally did not need to see the projection of the Miller interview at the beginning and found that a bit unnecessary, as if the Players felt that I as an audience member needed to have the parallels in the text pointed out to me. I think they could have best used that footage on their website or Facebook page to promote the production in the run up, and for people to check out after seeing the play to drive traffic to their site. However, I don't know if that was just me, other people might have found it useful to have the play put into context for them. I'd be interested to hear what other audience members thought.

We had a really enjoyable evening seeing this play, it was better than some professional productions I have seen at Chichester Festival Theatre in the past, as well as being much better value! I'll definitely look out for future Chichester Players productions.