UK playwright and director Zinnie Harris was brought up in Scotland and continues to reimagine female characters who get a raw deal in our theatrical cannon. Her 2023 MacBeth (An Undoing) knocks the Scottish play from its revered heights and asks what if Lady MacBeth were in control.
It opens with a witch/crone/servant (Natasha Herbert) breaking the fourth wall to let us know that she knows we’re in on the joke. We’re an audience who never say its name in a theatre, read it in high school, and donned a neck ruff to perform a soliloquy in atrociously-paced iambic pentameter that we memorised by highlighting which words to emphasise. We don’t need another MacBeth.
Malthouse Theatre’s Australian premiere of this play isn’t another MacBeth. Even though we know it’s an “everyone dies” play, it’s a relief to open with an invitation to laugh and acknowledge that there’s no backdrop painted with heather and hope there will be no ridiculous accents.
This Scotland is designed by Dann Barber, with Amelia Lever-Davidson’s lighting and Jethro Woodward’s sound. It’s imposing grey castle walls have no turret’s and revolve like a horror-show carousal where the only way off is to leap towards the audience.
This Scotland’s undoing relies on the audience knowing that it isn’t what Shakespeare wrote. There’s a lot of his tale(s) and language, but this version is about the women.
As Shakespeare’s women tend to go mad and die or flit off happily in wedding gowns as sprites scatter flowers, I’m all for fucking with these stories. I want to see Shakespeare’s that question, wonder and demand different points of view.
Bojana Novakovic is Lady McB. She’s back in Melbourne from Hollywood and continues to show us why she’s one of our best. As her husband (Johnny Carr) begins the stab-fest, she’s in control and he’s the one who can’t sleep and wants the blood off his hands.
When the men in the castle refer to her as “king”, they listen to her orders, but not to her command to be called Queen.
As her husband descends into guilt-ridden inertia, her madness becomes the playwright’s as she keeps trying to show the missing scenes that make it her story: one where there isn’t blood on her gown and the director’s assistant at the back of the theatre listens to her.
Novakovic performs like it’s not Shakespeare. She’s funny and natural and her power comes from knowing that she has to be in a different story for this Queen to live.
Herbert is the link between the audience and the play. She’s the power that’s really running the show and owns every moment she’s on stage.
Jessica Clarke is Lady McDuff (and a witch). Here Lady McD is Lady McB’s cousin/sister and far more than minor collateral damage. Like the other women, we want her to win as she delights in being more than is expected of a bit-part wife.
Meanwhile, the men play the men, except Tyallah Bullock whose Malcom (and a witch) is vulnerable and scared. The men are not in on the conceit that it’s a new story. They kill and plot and don’t understand that the women are making the rules.
All of this brings laughter and even a degree of unexpected joy to the work, but I’m not sure if it’s meant to be as darkly funny as it feels.
It’s still a story where everyone loses as ghosts haunt and blood flows. It’s still about guilt and souls that break because there’s no way out. It’s still a horrible tragedy with no happy sprites and weddings.
Matthew Lutton’s direction captures the big picture about questioning everything about MacBeth, but the characters’ confusion about their world being undone feels like they are all in different plays. The tone keeps shifting and there’s a disconnect between laughing because there’s no way to win and playing for the laugh.
Or maybe that’s the point. Shakespeare is not consistent. His wrote women to be performed by boys. His pedestal is unshakeable. I’d rather see an inconsistent work that questions all of this than one that worships the old Bard.
MacBeth (An Undoing)
Merlyn Theatre – Malthouse Theatre, 113 Sturt Street, Southbank
Performance: Wednesday 10 July 2024
Season continues to 28 July 2024
Information and Bookings: www.malthousetheatre.com.au
Images: Bojana Novakovic – photo by Jeff Busby | Johnny Carr and Bojana Novakovic – photo by Jeff Busby | Johnny Carr and Bojana Novakovic – photo by Jeff Busby
Review: Anne-Marie Peard