THEATRE REVIEW - MACBETH REFLECTED 21 Jan'10
Rating: 2 out of 5

Casting mars 'Macbeth Reflected'

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
21 Jan '10


TORONTO - Many of us grew up in a world where mothers continually assured us that anything worth doing was worth doing well.

Apparently that axiom has now morphed into something more akin to “Anything worth doing is worth doing — well, at least, we tried.”

Case, in point: Theatre Jones Roy’s presentation of Macbeth Reflected that opened at the Lower Ossington Theatre on Tuesday.

As the title might imply, this is a work that tries to look at Shakespeare’s immortal ‘Scottish play’ from a different perspective — in this case, from inside the marriage between Lord and Lady Macbeth. Theirs was a marriage of love and ambition that has fascinated Shakespeare’s fans on both sides of the footlights since the play’s first performance more than 400 years ago.

To accomplish this, adaptor (or adapting playwright, as he styles himself) and director Thomas Morgan Jones has mined Shakespeare’s text for dialogue to create a portrait of the Macbeth marriage, occasionally appropriating lines and rearranging story — presumably to make his particular take on the refocused tale all the more compelling.

In order to reinforce the whole notion of a peek inside the private lives of his characters, Jones keeps his cast to a minimum, relying on the sound design of Thomas Ryder Payne and the lighting of David DeGrow to flesh out what’s left of Shakespeare’s tale in this 45-minute, modern dress take-out.

With the weird sisters transformed into theatrical aurora borealis, and the middleman eliminated in the death of Banquo, it’s a small but interesting concept. It’s as worthy an experiment in its way as, say, setting the whole shebang in Africa and killing off the title character with a shovel.

So, more’s the pity that it is almost impossible to tell how successful the experiment has been — because of Jones’ casting.

Now, in fairness, it must stated that John Ng has done some impressive work on local stages, while Mary Ashton’s bio would suggest she has been equally impressive further afield.

But when it comes to the formidable challenges every actor must face when tackling Shakespearean verse, these two — cast as Lord and Lady M, respectively — are simply not up to the task. And sadly, in truncating the play, Jones has further underlined their weaknesses by giving them no opportunity to play to other strengths.

He glowers.

She struts.

And they both make a hash of the text.

One is left that with the unfortunate impression that if this couple were to follow the story to the end of Shakespeare’s play, Birnam Wood would not in fact come to Dunsinane, as the Bard decreed, but rather would inexplicably show up somewhere in the area of Wisteria Lane.

This isn’t the worst indignity that has been visited on Shakespeare and, as usual, he wins. Macbeth Reflected doesn’t reflect badly on him, but it sure doesn’t look that good on Theatre Jones Roy.