Macbeth (Tour)

Jatinder Verma frames his Asian-inflected Macbeth as a family drama, not a national and political one – but his touring production for Tara Arts doesn’t go far enough in reimagining the tale.

Ralph Birtwell’s cheery Duncan is not so much a king of Scotland, as a cheery old uncle at a family gathering. He arrives turbaned and festooned, only to be murdered in his bed by Robert Mountford’s handsome, imposing Macbeth. That’s all well and good, but the transposition isn’t without its problems. Why, for example, does Duncan have guards outside the spare bedroom?

Verma’s staging is a confusion of two layers: a domestic drama in which relatives fight like Bollywood ninjas and armies storm the family home. A single standing lamp suggests a sitting room; the portculis behind it a medieval castle. The rules are never entirely clear.

That may, of course, be down to my unfamiliarity with the intricacies and hierarchies of British Asian family life, but it’s also a result of Verma’s chosen playing style: front-facing entertainment with a bit of spectacle thrown in for good measure. True, that nods to a different theatrical tradition, but the side-effect is to hollow out Shakespeare’s play and undermine much of its credibility.

For example, while Verma intends his three witches as hijras – transsexuals legally recognised as third gender in India – onstage they trip into the tradition of drag, coming across first and foremost as bearded men in saris. They’re sent up as such, with song and dance routines, where they ought to instil an uneasy, mystical quality.

Verma ensures the action’s played at pace, kept swift to keep things engaging. However, while an onstage drummer (Rax Timyr) provides a pulse, Kev McCurdy’s extended Bollywood-style fight scenes – complete with foley-style sound effects – act as crowd-pleasing asides and slow the plot down. Is it rushing or dragging? Well, er, both.

However, that lightness is also the production’s saving grace. For all its muddle, exacerbated by poor doubling, it’s never remotely pretentious. Nor, however, is it at all portentous – and Macbeth really ought to be. Shaheen Khan’s Lady Macbeth suggests the onrush of madness at the merest mention of murder, while Mountford never really conveys Macbeth’s inner-turmoil. Umar Pasha is a gruff, convincing MacDuff, but most of the cast emphasis meter over meaning and the result, too often, is sing-song school play Shakespeare.

Tara Arts's Macbeth tours until 9 May 2015