Macbeth - The Ballet
Reviewed by Leelamani HATHTHOTUWEGAMA
Shakespeare is a daring choice for adaptation and especially when
you consider a play like Macbeth with its tremendously powerful poetic
structure, it is indeed a risky task to compose a ballet devoid of any
verbal utterances to convey, for example, Macbeth’s terrifying inward
guilt and moral struggle, without his tremendously powerful soliloquies.
Last Sunday Ravibandu Vidyapathy threw up a brilliant adaptation of
Macbeth in ballet form at the Lionel Wendt theatre. The audience
comprising mature theatre lovers, filled the hall to almost its full
capacity.
If they had any doubts about the ability of a creator of oriental
ballets to adapt one of Shakespeare’s most potently dramatic and
concentrated tragedies to suit the contemporary Sri Lankan dance
theatre, they were dispelled by the convincing and intelligent
performance, especially of Ravibandu and Samanthi Ravibandu in their
respective roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, by superb mime, movement,
and dance finely synchronized by the neatly composed individual cameo
and group choreography - a richly gathered audio-visual spectacles with
terrific drumming and a musical score by Pradeep Ratnayake which made
the text yield its traumatic best all the way through.
Shakespeare is a daring choice for adaptation and especially when you
consider a play like Macbeth with its tremendously powerful poetic
structure, it is indeed a risky task to compose a ballet devoid of any
verbal utterances to convey, for example, Macbeth’s terrifying inward
guilt and moral struggle, without his tremendously powerful soliloquies.
Ravibandu had to depend totally on the subtle nuances of dance
movement, mime, facial expression and background music to create this
impact. It was quite evident that the actors who played the roles of
Macbeth and Lady Macbeth thought of Shakespearean acting as a process in
which your person, as represented by your body, facial expression,
movement etc. are also very much engaged in interplay and this enabled
them to play their roles convincingly, even without uttering a single
word!
In “Is Shakespeare Still Our Contemporary?” edited by John Elsom,
several critics raise the issue of the difficulties encountered in
translating and adapting Shakespeare and according to them even
contemporary British audiences find Shakespeare’s language difficult to
understand.
Nevertheless a few Sri Lanka dramatists (Jerome de Silva’s Sinhala
version of Macbeth, Tony Ranasinghe’s Julius Caesar, Gamini
Haththotuwegama and Haig Karunaratne’s Hamlet in Sinhala to name a few)
have endeavoured this daunting task of translating and adapting
Shakespeare to our local theatre and some of them have shown by their
outstanding success that adaptation and translations of Shakespeare
would be a stayer in Sri Lanka, not something going on by rote.
In such a context Ravibandu’s effort is highly laudable and in spite
of a few short comings its success would augur well for similar
productions.
The opening and the ending were superbly innovative with Macbeth on
stage in the uniform of a modern day war general with brass buttons and
war emblems, an allegorical figure symbolising modern day power
politics. It was the Witches who put a crown on his head, robed him in a
red mantle and put a sword in his hand.
I also appreciated the way the director brought out Macbeth again for
a final cameo suddenly revealing the Witches appearing from nowhere and
taking away everything except the red mantle symbolising the staying
power of evil in the soul of one man even after death. Another
outstanding scene was the hallucinatory dagger scene where Macbeth
portrayed his role as a totally realised experience.
Overall Macbeth and Lady Macbeth gave outstanding performances:
Macbeth sliding in and out of the action, so exquisite yet powerful in
his dancing movements and facial expressions, Lady Macbeth regal and
awe-inspiring in bearing, demeanour and movement.
It would have been touch and go between them if Lady Macbeth had
risen to the heights expected of her in the latter half of the ballet.
This could have been achieved if she had portrayed her gradual loss of
moral balance and the final collapse more convincingly.
Perhaps it was her heavy make up which made her face resemble a mask
in Greek drama that hindered her from depicting effectively the pathetic
reversal of her situation in the latter half of the ballet.
However, the white clad figure whose dancing movements synchronised
perfectly with those of Lady Macbeth’s symbolising her conscience in the
sleep waling scene, was an unusual touch, visually exciting as well.
The three Witches remind you of the Furies in Greek drama and they
seized their roles immediately and rendered their roles imaginatively.
Their importance had been heightened by the director to make the
audience feel their presence throughout.
However, Banquo failed to exploit the full potentialities of his
role. He needs much rehearsing and polishing up in order to reach the
heights designed for him. Macduff and Malcolm’s roles were minimised so
much so that they were almost non existent. I think it is an interesting
touch which intensified the tragic hopelessness of the play eventhough
it almost negated its most redeeming forces (Malcolm and Macduff) at
work.
As mentioned earlier, Ravibandu had made certain changes in his
trans-creation, some of them leading to an imaginative and interesting
interpretation.
However, one main change I did not like was the depiction of
Macbeth’s conscience succumbing to external forces rather than to the
evil within him, so much so that in certain scenes it was almost implied
that evil was forced upon him.
In Macbeth’s second encounter with the Witches its not Macbeth who
sought them out, but the Witches who sought him out. It took away some
of the tragic impact of this artistic creation.
The stage sets were strikingly simple when compared with the
elaborate sets used in School Shakespeare Competitions which rather than
enhancing the performances serve to mask the talents of young actors
with overdoses of technical gimmicks.
In the Macbeth ballet what stood out impressively were three huge
daggers (one should note the matical number three) and the rest of the
set-ups comprising a dark, brooding castle, a cave and a withered tree,
which framed and highlighted the special setting and the atmosphere of
the play and the players’ actions. The production benefited immensely by
the superbly selected and executed music by Pradeep Ratnayake.
One final tribute to the plethora of dancers who were beautifully
choreographed - Their dance sequences provided a magnificent spectacle
all the way through.
All in all the dance troupe of Ravibandu Samanthi Narthanayahanaya
seems to be able to unleash a load of talent, a load of skills - in
mime, dance, music, synchronised acting, and choreography - yielding
altogether a fabulous display of stage craft. |