Is this a dagger I see before me? Not at all. Macbeth is centre-stage and thrusting a hand towards a juggler’s ring instead of a weapon. A handful of rings are then fashioned into a crown that is precariously balanced atop the acrobat’s head. There are no other props, and not a damned spot of stage blood, in this uncommon take on Shakespeare’s tragedy. Each member of the seven-strong cast plays Macbeth, some even juggling the title role and Lady M in the same scene.
Finnish choreographer Tero Saarinen’s bracing dance-theatre production startles from the start. Delaying the witches’ arrival, it begins on the battlefield and is played without an interval, like the best Macbeths. The spirit of circus is ever present, the murderous thane’s vaulting ambition at one point represented by his desperate clambering over a heap of bodies. Each wayward sister is played by a pair of entwined performers. For one of Lady Macbeth’s speeches, an actor protrudes amid the other six who are jumbled together as if to represent her skirts. When she repeatedly attempts to clean her hands, the accompanying speech is spoken time and time again by different actors, accentuating her fixation.
