MACBETH.SLAPELOOS. Written by William Shakespeare. Translated by Eitemaal Directed by Marthinus Basson. With Dawid Minnaar, Anna-Mart van der Merwe, Stian Bam, Jana Cilliers, Ludwig Binge, Senzo Madikane, Edwin van der Walt, Antoinette Kellermann and Charlton George. At Baxter Theatre until Saturday TRACEY SAUNDERS reviews
MACBETH.SLAPELOOS was commissioned for the 2013 Aardklop Festival to celebrate Basson’s contribution to the theatre industry over four decades and the epic production is a fitting tribute to his prolific career.
The production has garnered several awards including that of best director, best design, best production and individual awards for the cast; best actor (Dawid Minnaar), best actress (Anna-Mart van der Merwe) and best supporting actor (Charlton George).
This is the final production in the Baxter’s season of Afrikaans theatre production which began earlier in the year with Jaco Bouwer’s Samsa-Masjien.
Basson has used the text translated by Eitemaal (the nom deplume of the Afrikaans writer Wilhelm Jacobus du Plooy Erlank). The original text was written for a cast of 33 and Basson has reduced both the length of the script and size of the cast. The pared down version is still a lengthy piece and at a running time of more than two hours is not for the faint hearted.
The tale of violent ambition is well known and this interpretation does not deviate from the original. While remaining true to the original premise the staging of the production bears the distinctive Basson stamp and does not conform to any traditionalist notion of Shakespeare. The large scale mirrors on either side of the set reflect the futility of thwarted political machinations that eventually unravel. He focuses on sleep, or the lack thereof in this adaptation in which he adds layer upon layer, both in the staging and the interpretation. The sheer weight of both the subject matter and the multi-narratives can be overwhelming and requires a clear head to wade through the density.
While Macbeth descends to levels of increasing brutality to maintain his reign he is unable to sleep while Lady Macbeth cannot remain awake. Her trembling and thwarted attempts at balancing a precarious installation of delicate wine glasses mirror her tenuous grasp on reality as she watches the glasses shatter at her feet in despair.
Van der Merwe is suitably anguished and hovers on the edge of her mental collapse with a restrained sense of impending doom.
Minnaar is explosive as Macbeth and as he crumbles mentally he holds the centre on stage. Kellerman, who ended the run of Samsa– Masjien on January 31 wears the crown as if to royalty born. As the ill fated Duncan she is an androgynous vision of calm. In her role as “Character E” she is bolder and quietly menacing.
One is constantly drawn to Cilliers whose role seems to be that of highlighting the folly of Macbeth and his wife’s criminal acts, literally pointing to the calamity and havoc they have wrought. She is completely captivating. Playing a role indicated as “Character A” she opens the play and sets the scene with a question spoken by the witches in the original script, “When shall we meet again?”
Ultimately the production raises question after question, the nature and motivation of power and ambition, and while the how is observed it is the why that remains resolutely opaque.
George is a menacing presence on stage. His Banquo is disturbingly unlikeable and simultaneously charming and portrayed with his quintessential swagger.
As the literary world mourns the death of Andre Brink it is worth revisiting his contribution to the study of Shakespeare in South Africa. The acclaimed writer and academic had an abiding interest in Shakespeare and published Destabilising Shakespeare in 1996 where he examined the extent to which Shakespeare's plays are fraught with destabilising forces.
The following observation from his essay Reconciliation in Life and Literature has particular relevance to this Afrikaans adaptation of Macbeth. He wrote “In the years I spent on researching the history of the 18th century, a pivotal and crucial period in our shared past, it has always struck me, not just that violence has persistently marked and shaped our national consciousness, but that almost all encounters between black and white, between slaves and masters, between town dwellers and rural inhabitants, have demonstrated a fortuitous excess of violence.”
It is this excess of violence which Basson brings to the fore on the stage. Not just the violence inherent in the original text but that in our society, both locally and internationally.
The play is literally drenched in violence. Basson has never shied away from blood on stage and this is no different. Blood which splatters the backdrop during Duncan’s murder remains visible throughout. The backdrop opens with graphic scenes from the battlefields of the Second World War.
During the evening, images of bloodied bodies flit across the screen with an almost numbing frequency. Tyranny, the pursuit of power at all odds and bloody coups are not simply theatrical devices but a constant in modern society.
The use of English surtitles makes the production accessible to an audience who may not feel confident in their command of Afrikaans. Macbeth.Slapeloos is one of two adaptations of Shakespeare currently on stage in Cape Town. Not bad for a playwright who died almost four centuries ago.
l Tickets: R110 and R140. No under 14s. Starting times may vary dependent on the load shedding schedule, 0861 915 8000.