In a nutshell… With his slight frame and geeky glasses, Richard Marsh is no clearly Bruce Willis.
Ambience courtyard full#
This is a Macbeth full of sound and fury, but signifying something with every crooked gesture. But these quibbles are easily forgotten amid the overwhelming onslaught of the choreography. Cramming the play into a Fringe-friendly 90 minutes means parts are rushed out too quickly, while Macbeth himself is sometimes forced into a colourless shout to be heard over the live percussion score (although his “tomorrow and tomorrow”, the calm eye of this storm, is a highlight). The sexual chemistry between Macbeth and Lady M – the latter brilliant in dialogue scenes, though less convincing in her soliloquys – is as captivating as it is unsettling.Īside from a scene-stealing, winningly over-the-top Duncan, the quality of the verse-speaking is variable. If the witches never raise a shiver (their synchronised speeches have the unfortunate ring of a drama-school exercise), everything else here does. Dressed in potters’ aprons smeared with dry clay, the Flabberghast theatre ensemble spasm, writhe and gibber their way through gorgeously nightmarish tableaux, each one brimming with clever ideas.
If you want to see Shakespeare’s words wrung into new shapes through raw physical movement at the Fringe, this is the show for you. In a nutshell… Forget Ian McKellen’s Hamlet ballet. At one point, the audience say in unison: “It’s nice to have participated.” Yes, it is. And after two years where collective experience seemed endangered, there’s something quietly affecting about a show that brings people together to build something new. His colleagues wonder why: is it a mental breakdown, a protest, a performance-art piece? Work.txt’s satirical messages – office drudgery can turn us into instruction-following machines art can’t escape commercialism – can feel a little obvious, but the mechanics by which they’re delivered are constantly surprising.
At each turn, we become a little more involved.Ī plot slowly comes into focus, a story about a man who one day lies down in the foyer of his office and doesn’t move. Soon the crowd are building a set from yellow bricks next, an unnoticed printer whirrs into life, spitting out scripts. Aha, instructions! As soon as one audience member reads a line aloud, the next line appears. At first the audience sit confused, wondering what to do, until words appear on a screen upstage. In a nutshell… Here’s an original idea, executed with real wit: Work.txt is a show with no performers.