Fight offers tension as power couple focus on loss
Theatre Macbeth Botanic Gardens, Glasgow Marianne Gunn
FOR the canonical epitome of their Vaulting Ambition season, Bard in the Botanics must have had a record audience on Tuesday evening. Since the opening weekend of Macbeth was completely rained off, this freakishly balmy night seemed to be some kind of appeasement from the mercurial weather gods, and with 300 tickets sold or carried over it was almost standing room only on the grassy knoll.
Director Gordon Barr’s interpretation focuses on the loss within this power couple’s relationship – specifically the loss of a child. A baby crying, then silence, before a primal scream from Nicole Cooper’s Lady Macbeth. Pill-popping the pain away for the rest of the play, the fascinating character’s mask of power begins to slip until she meets her fatal demise, being calmly smothered on the chest of her once-passionate husband.
The couple’s sexual chemistry is alluded to, but there wasn’t a huge amount of smouldering electricity emanating from Kirk Bage’s controlled Macbeth; in fact, there was more tension in the final moments as he wrestled with a strapping Macduff, played by Alan J Mirren. Gender swapping for Banquo was also interesting, made clear with a playful slap on the womb for Emilie Patry; this meant, however, that the “bromance” side to Banquo’s bloody betrayal was underplayed.
Robert Elkin’s portrayal of The Witch was typically hypnotic although his multi-casting could be confusing for audience members not overly familiar with the Scottish play (and Elkin’s red nose comedy moment while portraying the porter was a gentle reminder of the joys of live theatre.) Gillian Argo’s minimalist/brutalist design which centred around the crib cum cauldron also added a macabre look at the maternal versus the malevolent.
Macbeth runs until Saturday, July 30 (weather permitting) then tours Scotland in August, most notably playing Cawdor Castle.
Theatre Queens of Syria Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh Neil Cooper
OUT of the darkness, 13 Syrian women line up wrapped in a multitude of coloured robes and head-scarves. Speaking in their own language, they become the chorus of Euripides’ battle-scarred tragedy The Trojan Women, telling of fictional peers robbed of everything they had by battles not of their making. This is just a prologue, however, for the series of real-life testimonies that come from the frontline of the war these women fled, seeking refuge in strange lands in what they repeatedly call “the boats of death”.
Over a brooding minimalist underscore, each woman takes it in turn to read letters, to their parents, children, brothers and sisters they left behind. Delivered directly to the audience, the women’s’ experiences are still raw, and there are moments when you fear they might not get through it. As their words are undercut by more passages from Euripides, however, the women gain strength from Hecuba, Andromache and Cassandra.
Zoe Lafferty’s no-frills production was developed out of a drama therapy project and brought to Edinburgh as part of a UK tour in a collaboration forged by the Developing Artists company, Refuge Productions and the Young Vic. If that suggests a show full of liberal platitudes, think again. As one of the women says, they are not here to entertain us. They are angry and they have a million stories to tell.
The result of this is a dramatic hymn of fury and sorrow, but which, in its delivery, becomes a fearless and profound act of defiance from a disparate group of survivors. By coming together in this way, they have reclaimed a power that speaks much louder than bombs.
Edinburgh Jazz Festival Jan Garbarek Group Festival Theatre Rob Adams
IT MUST have been something to be Jan Garbarek these past 40 years and more: getting up in the morning, knowing that when you blow into your instrument you are creating one of the most beguiling, instantly recognisable sounds in jazz.
The Norwegian saxophonist hasn’t always appeared to revel in such fortune. He can seem quite severe, which he’s not, and there is an austere beauty in some of his music.
As with his previous visit to Scotland in 2010 only more so, however, there was lightness and buoyancy and fun at work here. Bass guitarist Yaron Herman and percussionist Trilok Gurtu laid a springy undercurrent, as well as much musical colour beneath Garbarek’s marvellously burnished tone on tenor and soprano. Even the often inscrutable Rainer Bruninghaus got involved in keyboard frolics in his solo feature and duet with Herman.
If I had a reservation about a concert that produced entrancing, dancing folk themes, magnificent tenor ballad playing and a further engrossing example of Gurtu’s inimitable water music – he even made the bucket containing the water a musical instrument – it was that the lengthy solo features sometimes interrupted the flow of a fabulous, and fabulous sounding, ensemble.
That said, the playfulness that Garbarek showed, especially in his duet on selje flute with Gurtu’s frankly amazing tabla fingering combined with an, as always, beautifully tuned, singing drum kit, and his digging in on Herman and Gurtu’s funk groove were worth turning up for in themselves. So too the encore, complete with handclaps and audience participation, of Steve Winwood’s Had to Cry Today from the Blind Faith album. Nobody, surely, saw that gem coming.
Moscow Drug Club Spiegeltent St Andrew Square, Edinburgh Alison Kerr
THE one-hour opening concert by the festival first-timers Moscow Drug Club on Wednesday evening proved to be a strange and slightly surreal experience. This five-piece band, whose line-up comprises trumpet, guitar, accordion, bass and vocals/percussion, doesn’t hail from Russia at all; indeed, its name apparently represents more of a fantasy place where all sorts of exotic musical genres meet and merge.
Sitting in among the instrumentalists and looking like a cross between a circus ringmaster and the (fully clothed) burlesque queen celebrated in the song Strip Polka, Canadian singer and percussionist Katya Gorrie made an appealing host, and her easy charm and the laidback set-up on stage gave the proceedings a party feel. Indeed, on several of the numbers, notably Istanbul (Not Constantinople) and the stand-out Strip Polka, there was definitely a singalong potential.
The trouble was that so much of the programme was taken up with vintage novelty songs which don’t necessarily merit being revived. Peggy Lee’s dreadful The Gypsy With the Fire in His Shows, written for a Tony Curtis western, and Two Guitars, a Russian folk song with disappointing English lyrics by Charles Aznavour, were just two of the numbers which made you question this band’s taste in material – and wonder if they had turned up at the right festival. Moscow Drug Club would appear to be much better suited to the Fringe.
Jacques Brel’s Jacky brought Gorrie’s Norma Desmond-like theatricality centre-stage but a funereally-paced and surprisingly un-atmospheric Dance Me to the End of Love killed off any hope of Leonard Cohen saving the day.