Stage review: Macbeth, The Point

A compelling interpretation of Macbeth comes to the Barbican in November and I was invited to the home of producers, The Point in Eastleigh, to witness the spectacle as it arrived on our shores from Poland.

What we found there, initially, was something significant. Not quite a revolution, because Song Of The Goat have been pioneering their contemporary total theatre since 1996. Not something sudden, either, for this Macbeth has been simmering in workshops and rehearsals since at least 2007.

No, what flutters in the initial gloom is a tantalising excitement. This is a genuinely new way to revel in the lyricism of Shakespeare, bypassing the textual intricacies and opting to distil the essence of magic and tragedy into a more visceral brew.

Through dance, music, poetry and movement the ensemble cast root around in the primeval urgency of the Scottish play to convey its power and mysticism. Layer upon layer of studied performance elements - from the twist of an arm to a throaty wail - come together to form a symphonic whole.

Macbeth is suited to the treatment. Not only because the language is dripping with poetry and pithy phrase-making, but also because the play has a sense of foreboding as inexplicable and potent as a shiver down the spine.

The text is filleted (70 minutes) and has an air of a Greatest Hits compilation but the play is not the thing here. Director Grzegorz Bral is clear in his vision. He said: "We choose musicality and lyricism rather than characters and story."

The Polish Teatr Piesn Kozla (Song Of The Goat) work in English. Actors, including a mighty Macbeth (Gabriel Gawin) and Anna Zubrzycki (an overly melodramatic Lady Macbeth) choose to join Grzegorz ("I am the conductor more than director") in his 13th century Gothic refectory in Poland where they ferment their work with a rigorous regime of exploration, rehearsal and performance.

(The problems of a transfer to a larger space were revealed through sound design and volume issues.)

Occasionally, the piece betrays this long evolution with the space between the vignettes more fidgety and less assured than the elaborate set pieces.

But the spell is never broken. This is other-worldly; a mesmeric experience - hypnotic and true. The sparse kayagum (a Korean string instrument) helps create the world of fable while the Corsican chanting offers a sense of the timeless.

Fragmented, scattered, occasionally obscure, this interpretation is - perversely - an ideal starting point for Shakespeare newcomers.

The text is beautifully presented but requires little intellectual focus. Instead, the audience lets go of conscious faculties and becomes immersed in the rhythms of the play's heartbeat.

We feel, perhaps, what the Bard might have felt at the earthy, sparky, genesis of his inspiration. The result is a most sinuous and nebulous experience.

Bewitching theatre.

– From October 2010