18 February 2016
Macbeth
The Bason Botanical Gardens, Wanganui
Reviewed by John Watson
Many years ago I was chatting over lunch to a very low church Christian and describing the Easter service at Saint Bartholomew the Great in London. Saint Bartholomew’s is not low church at all and he listened quietly to what I said about the choir and the incense. Then he turned to me and observed “you know, there is only one question about a church really. Is the word of God taught there or not?” It has always struck me as a sound test of a church and a slightly similar one can be applied to performances of Shakespeare. “Were Shakespeare’s lines delivered clearly and easy to understand?”
By this criterion the amateur production of Macbeth in Wanganui was a great success. The main characters ensured that the meaning and the beauty of the lines reached the audience and if one or two of their juniors found it difficult moving between standing mikes, that is very understandable in an open-air production.
Sparkling performances from Lady Macbeth (Rachel Plank), MacDuff (Graham Dack) and Macbeth himself (Andrew Fawcett) would have done credit to a professional production and the witches and Porter were entertaining too. Set all this against the background of a New Zealand botanical garden on a summer evening with a chorus of cicadas and you begin to wonder why anybody spends February in the UK at all. Following the success of the production it is likely that they will do more Shakespeare next summer so if you expect to be in Wanganui in mid-February 2017 you should certainly keep an eye out for it.
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