Macbeth

Re-envisioning Shakespeare for a youthful audience is hardly new. There’s 10 Things I Hate About You, a teen riff on The Taming of the Shrew; The Lion King, a Hamlet refresh; and Roman Polanski’s Macbeth, welcomed by newbies to the Bard’s early 17th Century prose. This production, aimed at 21st-Century offspring, is a bold interpretation.

Director George Banders’ soldiers are dressed for a modern Army, while smartphones are tapped in place of message scrolls. At the outset, Banders ditches the prophesying witches stirring their stew of trouble, which sets the scene for murderous treachery in the original. Instead, a colourful tableau emerges. A youth, Prince Malcolm, lounges on a throne texting, while family groups gambol around him. On a raised, cloth-covered platform at centre stage, a pregnant bride and her groom canoodle. Suddenly, dramatically, her baby is born and dies. Apparently, this is the childless Macbeths.

Fast forward to an older Macbeth, now Thane of Glamis, who with his sidekick Banquo is returning triumphantly to Scotland from the Norwegian battlefields. The witches, reinvented as zombies (a clever touch), creep from under the covered platform to hail him with a new title, Thane of Cawdor, and as a future king. There are jokes: Messenger Ross enters a party scene, flourishing a joint and declaring, “To Weed or not to Weed?”.  The more seasoned of us, at least, got a chuckle at the random reference to Hamlet, perhaps lost on the rows of school students up front.

This party (tequila shots, dancing) is where Macbeth begins to unravel over his murder of King Duncan, and lead actor David Soncin does the scene full justice. Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot” madness scene is less successful: the production is so busy that actor Tamara Lee Bailey lacks the space she needs for such an important plot point.

This hectic pace is a drawback. Although the “exit, stage left” approach of yesteryear, where actors delivered their lines and moved offstage, would underwhelm an audience used to Marvel big-screen action, pivotal soliloquies need a quiet stage for full impact.

That Sport By Jove’s approach jarred with more traditional Bard fans was evidenced by a handful of mature patrons walking out. But a brief chat with students post-show assured that it was a hit with its key demographic. Nevertheless, Shakespeare’s opening of three crones mumbling with evil intent for his lauded antihero, perfected by Polanski in 1971, is hard to beat. Sport By Jove has made a brave attempt.

Find out more: www.sportforjove.com.au/macbeth-2025

Marie Blanch

Images: David Soncin and Tamara Lee Bailey as the Macbeths & David Soncin as the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor.

Photographer: Kate Williams