Macbeth With A New Twist

A new production of Macbeth due to tour the north from February 21, is one that fuses live performance with striking video technology by the acclaimed imitating the dog and, as Group Editor Andrew Palmer found out, this innovative approach to Shakespeare’s exploration of power, ambition, violence and love is impressively inventive

I am stunned! Entering the Courtyard Theatre at Leeds Playhouse on my way to the Green Room I am amazed at the technical wizardry that has engulfed the small auditorium. I imagine it must be like stepping into Dr Who’s Tardis.

In a way Dr Who is a good analogy because I am meeting the director and some of the actors who are starring in a new production of Macbeth where past meets future in an audacious and dazzling new retelling of Shakespeare’s tale of ambition, betrayal and downfall.

Andrew Quick, Co-Director and Artistic Director at theatre company, imitating the dog, tells me it is a daring, neon noir thriller where Shakespeare’s original language collides with startling new scenes, stunning visuals and a powder-keg intensity.

“We are world making and building - which is exactly what Shakespeare did - through his use of language. Imagine what it was like for his audiences that could not read or write. They would not necessarily have understood all those beautiful words tumbling out but they would have had an effect and been really amazing.

“I am not making a direct comparison to Shakespeare in that sense, but I would hope that we are doing something with language in its broader sense. Visual language in the round, that swirls around you in the space. Shakespeare built a world through words and we will build a world through images, words and sound creating an equivalent of what was then called a circumference of ears.”

row[]As we chat, the three witches join us: Laura Atherton, Stefan Chanyaem and Matt Prendergast and we discuss how just as it was in Shakespeare’s time, their production will be dynamic, exciting and disturbing. The energy and chemistry between the trio is tangible.

This is Stefan’s first production with the innovative company and he tells me “it’s such a unique challenge.”

Laura says: “We are the witches but we are calling ourselves tricksters to distinguish ourselves from the other characters and our role is to construct the world for the Macbeths. Stefan, remind us how you described the lens through which we play the characters.”

Leaning forward Stefan explains: “We have given this overarching character an umbrella name - the Trickster - all the other Shakespearean characters that we play are kind of seen as the offspring of this one character. I view the Trickster as sitting above all these other characters as an amalgamation of the Furies and Valkyries, in the sense that they are attracted to the story of Macbeth, to the disruption in the natural order when Macbeth kills MacDonwald - the disruption in his fate. They are attracted to this event and they become like shepherds of the soul and architects of his fate.”

Turning to me Laura comments that it’s the manifestation of the witches, “because we also slip into the witches, hence this overarching character the Trickster taking on these other roles to fulfil the narrative to make it work for the Macbeths.”

“What’s difficult about that,” Matt says, “is that there are a lot of characters for three people, so distinguishing them from one another becomes more difficult and we have to make bolder choices than we might usually to establish character or sometimes we do that by staging. There is always a careful way to think about how to portray each character differently.”

Laura ponders for a moment before saying: “It is important that all the characters are played by the tricksters, it is a very active putting on of character, we are not multi-role playing we are the witches taking on these characters.

Moving onto the technology I ask Laura if it is intrusive?
“There is always a relationship to the technology with imitating the dog and in this show we control it. There are two cameras on stage and between the three of us we operate them. The camera lens becomes part of our way of seeing the world. Sometimes I will zoom in on Lady Macbeth and it feels as if the Trickster constructing this world, owns it. The technology forms part of how we are as characters, it is integral to what we do.”

Matt points out that it’s not often something seen in the theatre where you can do a filmic close up of a character. “It adds a whole other dynamic to the performance just by zooming in on someone’s face.”
“It is all Stanislavski,” says Andrew and Laura is quick to say “No, it’s not about that; the technology is so important not an add on. The tech is always there, it becomes part of how we move on stage how we act.”

“The technology is like another actor, it feels like we are reacting to something organic, working with something not servicing it. In fact, it feels like a character through its rhythmic movement.”

Andrew is clear, the tech is a very important part of the presentational style of the text moving in and out of modes of register and the storytelling is as important as the story itself.

“That is why it is hard to direct. Bringing all those elements together especially the audio visual, sound and mics, they need to converge at a particular point for it to work otherwise it breaks down.”

And, as if on cue, music composer James Hamilton, interrupts to chat through a production issue. In part of the play, the video is timed to a specific piece of text but as the trio perform, their timing on stage changes. It must be precise, so James suggests it is piped into the actors’ ears.

It’s a fascinating discussion especially as I have not seen an imitating the dog production before and I make a note in the diary to see the Harrogate performance.
Wondering how it all comes together, Andrew tells me that the cast talk to the audience at the beginning setting out how to watch the play and how it all works.
How then, I ask, does he think people will react to his retelling?

“The story is so relevant today, a unique take on the original play. People will say it is Macbeth as I have never seen before, but still with Shakespeare’s story at its heart. These classical texts have a lot of currency but are always damaged by the time we are in so that has to be addressed. Perhaps people interrogate texts around gender, sexuality or politics, and inevitably they are going to have to adopt sightly new performative tropes because you can’t do it in the original style.”

“It has to be dealt with in a storytelling way with integrity. In Macbeth there are too many possibilities; there will always be straight productions but they are costly to put on in order to get the box office returns to pay for it.”

Andrew approached the text by taking out all the Lady Macbeth and Macbeth material putting it in to one document. “That’s probably the heart of the play. I then wrote down all Shakespeare’s scenes and what they do within the play. Once that was done I mapped out all the characters and what they did. I then set it in the gangland world which is Estuary City, in essence Essex. I conflated some of the characters and changed the dynamics in the play.”

“It was a pragmatic approach. It is about the story and moving between the Shakespeare and another way of explaining things, which allows me to dig into the Shakespeare and come to it from a different angle, embracing the cameras in a filmic way. This gives the technology meaning hopefully not being illustrative or a backdrop to the action. To make it work it has to be integral to the piece which is always a struggle and a challenge. You can easily be seduced by the tricks that you know. However, my instinct is that in what we have made, the technology is integral to the show as a whole but let the critics be the judge!”

Having heard in detail how it all works and seeing the set, I suggest younger audiences will not find it a problem because, as Andrew points out, they are so used to collaging text and visual information.
But what of older audiences? All the actors believe that if they perform well it will be enjoyed across all age groups, after all, we go to the theatre not to reiterate what we know but to have an experience that we wouldn’t get at home.

Matt makes a good point: “In the end the audience want a great story to connect to and it is always emotional or in some form of the imagination, Shakespeare gives us enough material to do that.”

imitating the dog has been making ground-breaking work for theatres for 25 years with Andrew working with fellow Co-Artistic Directors Pete Brooks and Simon Wainwright who designs the set and video collaboratively. The company grew out of Andrew’s time lecturing at Lancaster University.

The name of the company, imitating the dog, is the title of a painting by American realist artist Eric Fischl. Andrew thought the company’s work was about imitation and you can train a dog but it will always be unpredictable. “There is always a tension in theatre between imitation and doing something unpredictable – like a dog, trained yet always capable of doing something wild – so the name was a perfect fit,” he told me.

It’s time for the rehearsal to begin and as I step back out of the Leeds Playhouse Tardis into reality, mingling with students, shoppers and workers, all using mobile technology in different ways, I have no doubts this play will succeed and be enjoyed through its creative, ingenious and imaginative approach.



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