The third visit to Sutton Hoo this year. This time to see the Red Rose Chain Theatre Company present Macbeth in the forest. I’m surprised there aren’t more plays performed in the open like this. We’ve seen a performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream in a park in midsummer, decades ago, and the memory stays with me – dusk coming down as the play gets more and more supernatural, the tidy little rockeries lit with lanterns and very different from their prim daytime selves.
This play was performed against a backdrop of tall trees, with the hill sloping down behind them. Red Rose Chain are lively, and all young – the oldest might have been close to thirty and there were a lot of talented child actors playing full roles in the play. The girl who played one of the hired murderers crept up beside our seats to screech her lines to the other murderer on stage and then quietly apologised for startling us. “I do hate murdering people,” she said, as she sneaked off.
The actors were never still, unless someone else was delivering a monologue that they were not meant to hear – they fought, danced, ran around the back of the set and leapt into and out of barrels. They played instruments – flute, trumpet, accordion, guitar, a lot of bashed tins and pots to act as makeshift drums and an upright piano. There was a lot of comedy chucked in at odd moments, too. The Witches were oversized puppets with the kind of faces you’d see at a continental Carnival, dancing and singing their first scene in huge macabre spite. The Porter put a lot of extras into his “Knock, knock, knock!” speech and one lucky little girl got the chance to throw a mug of water over one of the actors. Not yer usual Shakespeare tragedy, though I’m willing to bet his actors put a bit of extra clown into even the tragedies (“Let not your actors speak more than I have writ down for them…”)
But the play became darker as dusk fell. The spotlights came on, and some dimmed to leave the sides of the stage area in darkness where characters crept around. The Witches returned in a much more sinister mood, and when they threatened to have their master answer Macbeth directly, there was a sense that something more evil still might be summoned up to the stage.
I won’t post pictures of the cast and stage here, in case Red Rose get upset; in any case, going to their website will show you much better images than I was able to take. The only thing their photos missed was the full moon shining through the branches of the trees backing the stage as the battle for the crown of Scotland took place. There is nothing like being there for the whole spooky atmosphere.
Julia Chalkley 