Little girls as witches? A nuanced, emotionally sensitive Macbeth? Of course I wanted to watch with an open mind, and to enjoy a new take on an old favourite. But it was hard to ignore my own child-self, looking grumpily over my shoulder and bristling at the prospect of betrayal: ‘those sisters don’t look very wyrd to me!’
Reviews
… The asides are like amusing marginalia scribbled on the pages of a well-thumbed library book; this irreverent approach is entirely in keeping with the spirit of the play. Shakespearean purists may object, but we should not pay attention to their oxymoronic concerns: there was never anything pure about any of the plays written by that master of adaptation, reinvention and hybridity — and least of all the comedies….
… [Barker's plays] are notoriously difficult to stage successfully. It is hard, as an actor or director, to tell if a moment ‘works’, when the drama operates on such unstable aesthetics, the very instability of which is central to the effect – or rather, the totality of many effects depending on the individual response of the audience member. It is like building a house during an earthquake: one has to accept that not the structure but its collapse is the object of spectacle – and hope that the result is as viscerally and intellectually disturbing as the material demands, and not merely baffling or revolting…
