Ambition anew

Signifying Nothing (Hammond Fleet Productions)

Theatre Republic, La Boite Studio

September 12 -23

Paul and Lainey Macbeth are double trouble…the ultimate ambitious duo, ruthless and willing to risk everything for more. They are like the Francis and Claire Underwood power-couple of Western Australian public service, moving swiftly from local politics to the state’s premiership. Even Paul’s best friend, Banquo has doubts about Mac and Lainey’s tactics. This is “Signifying Nothing”, playwright and stand-up comedian Greg Fleet’s modern take on Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” tragedy of vaulting political ambition, set in the megalomaniac world of Australian politics and featuring transformation of the bloody Scottish tyrant to a foul-mouthed politician with vaulting ambition and a hard drug habit.

The show is a two-hander, beginning as a husband and wife domestic drama, with all of the other characters later appearing as compliment on screen. Fleet is strong as the arrogant and egomaniacal, but also slyly charismatic, liberal candidate Paul Macbeth, even though the original text’s denser dialogue doesn’t always sit well in his delivery. Nicola Bartlett, meanwhile is both powerful and beguiling as his wife Lainey, ruthlessly manipulative and haunted by grief as she struggles to stay behind the political scenes. In her hands, the protagonist’s lady is more of a vulnerable, tragic heroine than focussed femme fatale. And it works. Her performance is a compelling one of desperation as she breaks down more from ongoing grief than sudden guilt over her primary role in the political machinations which have led to Premier Duncan being scandalised and Banquo brutally murdered. Indeed, the interaction between the two, co-dependently clinging to each other in the parental grief that many had read from the play, conveys an affection that reveals a real humanity behind their house of cards, enabling those familiar with the source material to consider their relationship anew.

Devilish scheming sits alongside comedy, however, as the robust Shakespearean story is morphed with the vibrant life of a Western Australian politician, eager to put aside the personal tragedy of loss of the couple’s son some years earlier in a domestic accident. The result is a compelling combination of high drama and political farce that is very clever in its contemporisation (without loss of key quotes) and Australian contextualisation. Although the expletive-filled Australian vernacular elements of the dialogue are quite delicious …. “Macbeth you dodgy fucker, Macduff is going to fuck you up”, however, it’s juxtaposition with Shakespearean language is sometimes jarring.

Similarly, when the story’s ghosts appear as projected on a screen above the bed, they are anticlimactic in ‘impact’. Otherwise, camera work complements set design, allowing for the intimacy of a marital bedroom, but also big picture moments courtesy of the projected recordings of the ‘munter’ weird sister ‘witches’ as exit-poll vox pop interviewees. Lighting evokes the extreme emotions of the story’s drama towards its ultimate, inevitable futility and a dynamic soundscape excites with song snippets from The Killers, Nick Cave and inventive use of Hilltop Hoods’ ‘The Nosebleed Section’ as integrated soundtrack to a political press conference q and a, representing some of the best few moments of theatre I’ve seen in recent years

“Signifying Nothing” represents a rich rendering of one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, that audience members can appreciate with only minimal general knowledge of the literary canon from which it originates. In presentation of the themes of “Macbeth” anew, it illustrates Shakespeare’s capture of the universal human condition and the significance of its timeless theme of the potential consequences of unchecked ambition beyond mere cultural heritage value.