Macbeth & Dunsinane

Aug 14 2024 | By Thom Dibdin More

Dunsinane: ★★★★☆ Bloody

Hill Street Theatre (Venue 41): Fri 2 – Thurs 15 Aug 2024
Review by Thom Dibdin

A Necessary Cat have done it again – bringing a powerful double helping of a Shakespeare starter and Shakespeare-adjacent main course to the Fringe in which the whole is better the sum of its parts.

The starter, if you can call a production which cuts hardly any of the text that, is a whistle-stop Macbeth, played at breakneck speed in a black box space with virtually no set. The main is David Greig’s Dunsinane, which shows Scotland after Macbeth’s demise and is rather longer – with proper set changes and everything – and more blood. A lot more blood.

Wendy Brindle and Colin Povey in Macbeth. Pic: A Necessary Cat

You could easily see one without seeing the other, and many do. These are two separate productions. You buy tickets separately, there is a different programme for each and they play in different rooms at the Hill Street Theatre.

Indeed, there is something very refreshing about Macbeth’s brevity and lack of set, which allows it to focus right down on the language. It is more than a radio play, but shows just how bloated and overblown the production staring Ralph Fiennes at Ingleston was earlier this year.

a refresher course

However, this Macbeth serves best when it is seen as a fore-runner to Dunsinane. It’s a refresher course to the characters and motifs of the original, the background to the epic Scottish wars which will follow, and a chance for director Angela Harkness Robertson to set her stall out on the aspects she wants to tackle in the Greig. Besides, the recurring characters are played by the same actors and the two shows share creatives and backstage crew.

Macbeth is, as you find out in Dunsinane, propaganda. More than the English propaganda Shakespeare wrote for James I And VI to justify his Scottish heritage, but a telling of history that is twisted by being framed by the victor, Malcolm, who came to be King of Scotland.

James Hay and Colin Povey in Macbeth. Pic: A Necessary Cat

That aside, Macbeth is excellently played. Colin Povey is particularly coherent in the title role, smashing through the early scenes with Michael Stephens at his side as a questioning, not needy, Banquo. The whole Act 1 setting up of Macbeth as Thane of Cawdor is achieved with great concision, so that hardly has it started than the Act II murder of Duncan is achieved.

Brief, maybe, but it is all there in the speaking. The verse is carried as naturally as any modern chat, as the company find its meter, easily conveying all the necessary information. Even, because of its brevity, providing greater clarity to the relationships between all the characters.

onrushing burst

Only Wendy Brindle as Lady Macbeth feels slightly at odds here. Her lines are more thoughtful and demand a different air to them which doesn’t fit quite as well with the onrushing burst of the rest of it.

The sole visible supernatural element are the witches (Hilary Davies, Harris Williamson and Sarah Stanton) – no returning Banquo in otherworldly garb for the ghost scene (which features the only stage furniture of the piece) or lighting effects for the dagger.

Two slight issues – the rush of language can be soporific in the sweat-box that is Hill Street’s Dunedin Theatre, while the attention to the detail in the order of the Lords’ departure, indicated as important in the lines, is not always adhered to.

Alan Sunter and Hilary Davies in Dunsinane. Pic: A Necessary Cat

Codification of status is is even more subtle and nuanced in Greig’s version of the Scottish court. Here James Scott’s louche Malcolm is a weak king of things said and not said. Dug Campbell’s brusque Siward, on taking Dunsinane castle, is shocked that not only are the Scottish clans still supportive of Macbeth’s cause, but his wife, Gruach, is very much alive.

This is not what Malcom had lead the English to understand when they gave him shelter and sent a 2,000 strong army by sea to to fight against the Tyrant, with Siward at its head. In a beautifully constructed lesson on language and disinformation, Malcolm defends his words, couched in “woulds” and “coulds”.

ages impressively

The setting for Siward’s military adventures in Scotland is given in letters home to his mother (Hilary Davies) from The Boy Soldier, who Alan Sunter ages impressively over the piece, from being taught to fight, being part of the walking Birnam Wood, on to becoming a servant to Siward and, finally, a jaded, man-soldier who has seen too much killing.

Siward’s two lieutenants try to keep him on course. James Hay as MacDuff who provides his only real path to understanding the Scottish psyche, and Paul Arendt as the, pragmatic, cowardly Egham, who doesn’t want to be there, and represents the English psyche, grown jaded with war.

Wendy Brindle and Dug Campbell in Dunsinane. Pic: A Necessary Cat

But it is Gruach who holds the real power and Wendy Brindle is an actress transformed in the role. Previously clipped and forced, she now prowls and connives – a queen of Scots caught yet still able to communicate with her people through the songs, in Gaelic, of her women, entangling Siward in her web, playing the long game.

Harkness Robertson makes great use her 24-strong cast, telling this epic tale which amounts to Siward’s failure to bring peace to Scotland and ending up a crueller despot than Macbeth ever was, with great efficiency. Gaelic consultant Abby Hanson ensures that it (and the vocal music) is lightly worn, the English refusal to learn the language another level of their failure.

blood and violence

She does rather revel in the blood and violence – fight and intimacy director Rebecca Mahar has had her work cut out – but this just emphasises (if it were needed) the play’s echo of imperial wars down the ages, where major actors have sought to impose peace on places they do not fully understand.

All told, this is once again a strong pairing. Not perhaps as obvious or clever as last year’s Hamlet with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. But certainly a bold and welcome way to revive Greig’s Dunsinane, which reveals itself to be every bit as relevant as it was when it was last seen, at the Lyceum in 2013.

Macbeth Running time: One hour and 30 minutes (no interval)
Hill Street (Dunedin), 19 Hill St, EH2 3JP (Venue #)
Friday 2– Thursday 15 August 2024
Daily: 6pm
Details and tickets at: Book here

Running time: two hours and 25 minutes (one interval)
Hill Street (Alba), 19 Hill St, EH2 3JP (Venue 41)
Friday 2– Thursday 15 August 2024
Daily: 8.05 pm
Details and tickets at: Book here

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