Calixto Bieito sets this in one of those big, shiny-grubby bars that have been springing up for a decade or so. Kathryn Hunter plays the bawd of the title as a butch, shaven-headed operator who deals in drugs as well as sex. “I know what you’re thinking,” she confides in the audience, “it’s a bit of a tacky show.” Fair enough, given that, on her right, a man is having anal sex with an impassive, Junoesque black woman in a yellow wig and white plastic boots.
I don’t mind watching such stuff if I’m paid to; but what has it to do with Rojas’s play? This is a co-production between the festival and the Birmingham Rep. The production values are pathetic; the acting is mostly dreary; and John Clifford’s “adaptation” has no sense of drama or character. As I say, Pointless Theatre.
The Berlin Schaubühne’s Andromache (Lyceum, three stars) is Luk and Peter Perceval’s fiercely concentrated reinterpretation of Racine’s tremendous Trojan tra-gedy, the one that swept him to fame at 28. All ages have their antiwar plays: civilisation has seen to it that we butcher each other regularly to provide passionate humanists such as Racine with blood-soaked material. The 21st century has already made a contribution. When Orestes (Ronald Kukulies) talks here of destroying the empire of evil, you know exactly where you are.
Racine’s play is a complicated psychological intrigue of love, set against the background of war. The Percevals have seized on his central idea: that love is a continuation of war by other means. The five characters are perched perilously on a high platform, possibly built over a grave: one reckless movement and they could fall together. Morally, they already have. The crisscrossing relationships are expressed in terms of resentment and power.
This is a brutal, angry performance. The actors seldom move: they are like tortured figures on a frieze in a besieged acropolis. They speak fast, in a desperate, furious monotone, and so low that they all wear headset mikes, which are clearly visible and distracting, and suggest, unfairly I hope, that the actors of a leading German company haven’t had proper voice training. The end is bleak, with a sense of moral defeat. The doomed Andromache (Jutta Lampe) sits fidgeting slowly with her fingers: what else can she do now? You emerge chastised and angry; but the severe tightness of this version leaves no space or time for a sense of character. It’s like a passionate sermon: you agree with every word, but it’s still more sermon than drama.
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Theatre Babel’s Macbeth (Gateway, four stars) is a Fringe production, but it would hold its own in the official festival. Graham McLaren has edited the play into a 105-minute chamber drama, played out on a murky stage chequered with shafts of pale light. Dozens of swords, hung from above, hover just above the floor; Macbeth (John Kazek) and Banquo (Stuart Porter) walk into a brushwood of steel. Some purists will snort with indignation at some of the editing, but the integrity of the play is unharmed. I’ve seldom seen the sense of lawlessness that is at the heart of all tyrannies put across with such black clarity. This is a moral thriller about a man whose very strength destroys him. It is Macbeth’s tragedy. Kazek understands this perfectly; and his relationship with Lady Macbeth (Rebecca Rodgers) is based on a deep-seated mutual need that is unexpectedly moving. Not to be missed.