The Heart of Robin Hood

The Heart of Robin Hood

RSC, 23^rd November 2011and 30^th November

So much did I love The Heart of Robin Hood that I took my children to see it twice.  I have never, on the basis of expense, been to see the same performance more than once.  Would it be as compelling and entertaining second time round?

On our first occasion, sitting with my children and a friend and her son, eating pizza before the performance, we talked about what we knew of Robin Hood.  We all had our own ideas based on books or films and for me the definitive source was the 1991 film, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.  Remember when Kevin Costner kisses the earth when he arrives in England after fighting in the Crusades?  And so, ‘Hollywood Robin’ was born.

            This pre-amble proved to be quite pertinent because, as with any mythic figure, each generation will bring their own interpretation to the character.  It was not until Victorian times that the idea of stealing from the rich to give to the poor was added to the Robin Hood fable.  Until then he was simply a thuggish outlaw whose antics were loved and feared because of his freedom from all authority which the woodlands of Sherwood provided.  And so it is with David Farr’s excellent play where we find Robin, played by James McArdle, enjoying himself enormously in Sherwood Forest, robbing any rich nobleman who dares to enter the forest.  McArdle plays Hood as a dirty, Northern Peter Pan who sweeps down from the remarkable woodland scenery to accost his victims.  His merry men consist of Much (Robert Luckay), Little John (Michael Walter) and Will (Darwin Shaw).  They all make hyena-like screams as they attack and the drama is therefore instantly engaging and boisterous when they make their first assault.

            But where is this lovable rogue’s compassion, where is his heart and what is at the heart of this ancient parable?  Enter Maid Marion who seems to have taken her stage direction straight out of Shakespeare.  To flee an arranged marriage to dastardly Prince John she enters Sherwood Forest dressed as a man and becomes an outlaw with morals; robbing the rich and imaginatively, giving to the poor.  As David Farr readily admits, his Marion owes much to Rosalind in As You Like It who flees persecution in her uncle’s court to find safety and ultimately love, in the forest of Arden.  Marion, dressed as Martin, is accompanied by her servant, Pierre.  Played by the Icelandic actor Olafur Darri Olafsson, Pierre is a wonderful, camp, larger than life cross between Sir Toby Belch and Touchstone who provides much of the play’s comic engagement.

            The Shakespearean themes do not end here.  The woodland setting itself is instantly reminiscent of A Midsummer Night’s Dream where mystery and enchantment go hand-in-hand.  Much of the play’s darkness seems also to pay homage to Shakespeare’s bloodlust; from the ripping out of Makepeace’s tongue, to the threat of killing the children and the hanging corpse of their father.  At the end, when the forces of good and evil come head to head and a fight ensues, Marion rips the dress off her sister Alice.  Then, in white petticoat, hair streaming about her, Alice falls into the pond and I was instantly reminded of Ophelia.

            This pond was used imaginatively throughout the play, for the outlaws to hide in or for people to fall into.  This is just one aspect of the inspired scenery by Borkur Johnsson.  Johnsson was brought on board by the play’s Icelandic director, Gisli Orn Gardarsson and it is perhaps this Icelandic creative contingent which has so ignited this performance.  With the branches of the trees forming a platform above the stage, leading to the stage is a huge, moss covered skate ramp from which characters are propelled into the forest at high speed.  This creates a movement of action up and down as well as horizontally which grabs the attention, especially of children.  Addis Williams, who plays Gisborne’s Henchman, winds himself acrobatically up and down the ropes from the trees, to land silently and menacingly next to unsuspecting innocents.  His talents are particularly notable but most of the characters are required to perform some act of acrobatic show.  At one point, playing dead Robin hangs, for what seems like a dangerously long time, upside down, until I started to worry about all that blood rushing to his head.

            The first half flew past and after temporarily losing my son in the interval (the layout of that theatre is confusing, isn’t it?) we were back and eagerly awaiting the second half.

            The plot thickens as a victory for the outlaws seems impossible. A particularly nice touch, to my mind, is the mockery of religion that is doled out in the play, in contrast to the supreme power of nature as represented by the forest.  Prince John, the archetypal villain, justifies himself always by references to God.  ‘God intends her beauty for me’ he states when talking of his desire to capture Marion and marry her.  When he finally meets her, he tells her, ‘You have God in your eyes’ but this clichéd reference is in stark contrast to Robin’s love for Marion.  For Robin, he aspires to a marriage of equals and comments that ‘there was something ...in her eyes... like when you looked her in the eye, she’d look straight back’.  Call me sentimental but the culmination of the play, of Robin finding his heart, is superbly touching.  In response to the Duke of York’s, ‘Lead them to the altar’ Robin states, ‘But if I am to marry your daughter, the altar will not be made of marble and gold but of bark and branch.’  And the play ends with Robin and Marion in a stunning balletic pose being lifted up into the forest, spiraling around until they become entwined about each other, as the lights dim and the branches sparkle with fairy lights.

            What a treat to get to do it all over again!  And this time we were sitting, not in the upper gallery but in the stalls.  Where before we saw the actors clambering about in the branches of the ‘tree’ now, on the ground, this lofty entertainment was hidden from us.  But what we gained, being at ground level was a lot more of the nuances of the actors’ performances.  We saw their expressions, we understood their jokes better and we had the thrill of them rushing past us each time they entered and exited the stage.  Perhaps, though, on this one occasion the higher your seat, the better the entertainment.  I would go again and try the circle next time!  Take old people, take young people, go and see Robin Hood!

The Chequers, Ettington, 8th November 2011

The Chequers, Ettington, 8^th November 2011

So, I’d been to see a Plastic Surgeon, sorry, Cosmetic Surgeon (don’t ask; I haven’t worked out the anecdote yet).  And whether it was the fluorescent lighting or the disturbing photographs that he showed me on his little computer screen, I don’t know, but I felt the need for a drink.  So, as we were leaving that place that is known as ‘Posh Birmingham’ it was decided that it would be acceptable, after checking with the babysitter, to stop off en route for supper.  We decided on the Chequers; I was not up for any big surprises on that night.  We’d been there before and knew the decor to be tasteful, the food to be edible.

            We entered into that refuge of subtle lighting, log fire smuttiness and general bonhomie and felt instantly at ease.  We were greeted at once by all the staff.  Not in a kind of it-is–my-job-to-meet-and-greet way but with all the relaxed friendliness of people who find eye-contact a natural achievement; people who work in the service sector because they enjoy to serve, a sort of American idea.  It was Tuesday night and so we had the choice of eating in the bar or the restaurant.  I favoured bar and after a small moment of conflict with husband (who, frankly, was not attired to attend a private hospital, let alone a restaurant) we were seated near the fire in the lively bar.

            How do they do it?  They have triumphed with the gastro-pub formula in a way that my local pub could only dream of.  It was Tuesday night and not only the bar but the restaurant as well was decently busy.  Both were coexisting in a spirit of parasitic harmony; the bar giving atmosphere to the restaurant, the restaurant giving respectability to the bar.  At the point of ordering drinks, let me tell you reader, I was prepared to forgive much.

            I was presented with a Pinot of such icy, citrus, clarity that I felt foolish for ever thinking that Sauvignon was the only way to Essex.  Husband had something fizzy and yeasty which suited his attire but is hardly worth commenting on.  I did not have a starter but ordered some olives to accompany the wine.  They were mostly green, too hard and swimming in a liquid that was not quite vinegar but more a cross between paraffin and washing-up liquid.  Green olives inundate the market and I find that mostly, it is more reliable to buy them tinned.  When tinned, they do not aspire to be a gourmet food product but they have been softened by something that at least tastes like vinegar and not detergent.  Juicy, fat black olives, however, I would like to see more of.  Husband had plaice goujons with mayonnaise.  Admittedly, the portion was disappointing.  He found them to be under-seasoned but I rather liked them; they were pleasingly crisp.  Of course, they might have been light relief for me after the artificial peculiarness of the olives.

            For my main course I had fish pie with greens.  Comforting food indeed.  It was creamy and not too fishy, seasoned perfectly and if the addition of a prawn or two would have added some variety of texture, I’m enough of a purist to appreciate the omission.  The greens, however, are worthy of comment.  Let us rewind to a time when vegetables in the United Kingdom were solely broccoli and carrots.  It was something like when women fought for the vote; they fought on the basis of equality, understandably but then this idea of equality was applied to every form of legislation, even when it was not appropriate.  And so it was with vegetables.  Suddenly, we had to eat all vegetables in a nearly raw state to prove ourselves civilised.  My ‘greens’ included, amongst the cabbage, some artistically arranged courgette.  Let me ask anyone who cooks and enjoys food whether they enjoy the nearly-raw courgette?  No.  That is the only answer.  Like most Mediterranean vegetables, its true flavour and sweetness is exposed after a certain amount of cooking.  And NOT before.  I do not want to eat soggy broccoli but neither do I want to eat raw courgette.  Anyone who appreciates Ratatouille will understand my particular sensitivity on this point.

                        As for husband, he had Guinea fowl and mash.  He claimed that the mash was under-seasoned and not quite warm enough.  The latter observation has an inkling of microwave about it but perhaps that is being overly sensationalist.  The under-seasoning, however, can be emoted about in a similar way to that of the greens.  Once upon a time, it was decided that salt was bad for the health and that too much killed the taste buds and stopped us from appreciating real flavour.  Processed food, we were told, was full of it.  However, the proliferation of overly salty food is not a justification for un-tasty, under-seasoned food.           

                        But we were happy.  We tipped generously and the conversation, off the back of the nice plastic surgeon, flowed freely.  I can’t recommend the Chequers enough!

The Homecoming, The Swan Theatre, 8th October 2011

The Homecoming

Harold Pinter

I was not going to write a review of this performance because I have never seen a Pinter play before and therefore, did not consider myself a worthy critic.  However, given the absolute tedium of the play; the scandal of un-entertainment packaged as drama, I feel compelled to have a rant.  And why not?

                        The Homecoming is about a dysfunctional family; not an original premise but Pinter was the Avant-garde of British drama in the 50s and 60s and so, whereas Ratigan before him wrote about the dysfunctional upper-class family, Pinter writes about the dysfunctional working-class family.  I expect, at the time, it was said that Pinter wrote of ‘real’ people.  It was a sort of political reaction against our class-ridden society, I expect, and perhaps the likes of Pinter and his followers did think that the working-class was like the family that he portrays in The Homecoming.  Perhaps, it was this political correctness that stopped people being able to properly criticise Pinter.  Or perhaps, I just saw a shoddy performance.

                        The Homecoming tells the story of a family of men.  Max presides as the anti-patriarch over a family of three sons and a bachelor brother, Sam.  The family is grotesque without being fascinating.  Max is a foul-mouthed misogynist who, it is intimated, has abused his children and neglected his late wife.  Played by Nicholas Woodeson he was a perfect cross between Alf Garnet and Bob Hoskins.  The family dynamic is tested to breaking point by the return of eldest and prodigal son, Teddy.  Teddy  has escaped the kitchen sink drama of his childhood and has been absent for six years acquiring a wife and three sons and building up his career as Professor of Philosophy at an American university.

                        And this is what happens, in a nutshell:  Teddy and his wife, Ruth arrive and we see, from a brief, effective scene, that husband and wife have difficulties with communication (to coin a modern phrase) and have grown apart (to coin another).  Whilst staying with the family Ruth seduces both of the younger sons and decides to stay with the family whilst Teddy goes back to America.  Teddy’s brother Lenny, we now discover, is a pimp.  He and youngest brother Joey, along with Max decide to pimp out Ruth so that she can make them some money.  Uncle Sam drops down dead.  I kid you not.  It is melodrama that makes no sense whatsoever.  It is implausible every step of the way.  If Pinter wanted to demonstrate how poorly people communicate he would have done better to include some light and dark.  Every character in this play seems to be on the edge of psychotic.  In the interval my husband asked me if I thought anything would happen in the second half.  I said that no, nothing would happen because of course, that’s not the point.  This is a tale of character.  But how to relate to these preposterous monsters?  That is the play’s great failing.  At the interval I would not have cared if I never saw the second half of The Homecoming; it is all very well to write clever drama that is different to what went before but it is a travesty to deny an audience entertainment.

                        With the talk of enforced prostitution, violence towards women and rape, some of the Americans in the audience laughed.  I see their confusion.  Was it a comedy?  The RSC is keen always to bring out the humour in their dramas.  But the feminist in me was decidedly bored by this play; it has not stood the test of time because its depiction of women is so dated.  The only female character, Ruth is a neurotic, sexually predatory femme-fatale.  Every man’s fantasy fuck then.  No need for any more women.  Aislin McGuckin played her beautifully because she never allowed herself to be intimidated by these men despite the fact that they are going to punish her severely for the simple crime of being female.  She brought a genuine erotic charge to the drama.  Poor Aislin had to cop off with goosy Jonathan Slinger yet again but at least that probably eased the tedium of the play for her.  For us, however, the nasty taste of misogyny was hard to stomach.  I wonder, again, if people were so in awe of Pinter in his hay day that they were unable to criticise, particularly from a feminist point of view.  So, why the humour then?  Pinter’s play is the equivalent of the rape joke; women rarely find it funny.

Restaurant Review for The Boat House, Fowey

The Boat House

Fowey, 27^th August 2011

Fowey is the sort of provincial museum that would make A A Gill vomit all over the windy cobbled lanes.  Me, on the other hand, I love a bit of quaint, bunting-clad Englishness.  On our recent trip we ambled along said lanes, wandered through a myriad of shops selling local art work and T-shirts for children costing £65, rented a boat and drank coffee in any number of the smart coffee houses catering for Londoners and their Boden-wearing offspring.  It really is very picturesque and I, for one, can only thank the Londoners.  All the houses look pristine, with their Farrow and Ball-painted front doors and understated slate signs.

            Anyway, you get the picture?  So, after a day of cheerfully dreaming of owning a second home or a boat (I was for the property, my husband wanted the boat), the family needed feeding.  My husband would have happily strayed away from the harbour and the Esplanade in favour of some small, un-showy, ‘local’ establishment of which he could convince himself he had precipitated some kind of discovery.  I, however, tended towards location, location, location and atmosphere.  So, where else to try and get a table but The Boat House on the harbour, with its outdoor tables full of laughing, white-wine swigging Londoners threatening to overspill beyond the outdoor heaters with their ostentatious jets of fire on display.  Gosh, those heaters were needed.  Wearing two jumpers and a jacket I decided that I still could not contemplate spending the evening outside.  So, I went to enquire as to whether we could book a table for the evening.  I was told that they did not take bookings but so long as we turned up before 6pm we should be able to get a table, afterwards we would probably have a 15 minute wait but no longer than that.  This is quite a popular arrangement these days; I imagine Jamie Oliver is to blame.  Well, popular with places that can rely on the fact that they are popular.  To me, this seemed to say, ‘hey, we are a laid-back, informal sort of a place; no need to book here’.  So I thought that we would be safe to bring our rowdy rabble inside, but more of this later.

            We duly returned at about five-thirty and were seated by the window, so that we could see the boats and the water but also in front of a sort of inset gas fire that was designed to look a bit like a pizza oven.  Warmth and a view; perfect!  I ordered a very reasonably priced bottle of French Grenache from the not-very extensive wine list.  It was beautifully chilled and very drinkable.  To start, we ordered a selection of nibbles.  The Calamari was a bit of a disappointment.  For £7 you might expect more than 5 rings of squid.  Squid which was chewier than it should have been.  The dough balls were hard like balls of pastry and did nothing to absorb the garlic oil that ran off them.  The Mozzarella and Tomato salad contained beautifully ripe tomatoes; a simple thing but so many restaurants serve tasteless, mushy tomatoes that look like they’ve been sitting around in cellophane for too long.  The mozzarella, however, had come straight out of a packet and cut in perfectly cylindrical rounds.  It was too firm to be considered fresh but perhaps that is expecting too much.  The basil pesto was applied in a stingy fashion.  I see why they do not give this simple dish its Italian name on the menu because then there would be some sort of precept for it to live up to.

            Despite our specifying that the children’s meals should come at the same time as our main courses, the children’s meals arrived on the table shortly after the starters were put down.  And herein lies the problem with a no-booking policy.  The families queued up at the door of The Boat House, each being told that a table would be available within 15 minutes and so they stood, looking forlornly in at the flames of the pizza oven thingy, zipping up their brightly patterned rain coats and telling their children, ‘not long to wait now.’  Everyone inside feels a slight sense of unease and the waiting staff are obviously briefed to get tables cleared and ready for the next party as quickly as possible.

            But back to the children’s food.  They all ordered the children’s Margarita pizzas.  The children’s menu was reasonably priced and the pizzas were exceptionally good.  They came in the shape of fish (a nice touch) and they filled the dinner plates.  For the purposes of research for this blog I sampled a fair bit of this pizza and can confirm that it was light and cheesy and exactly as pizza should be.  As the children were finishing off, my husband’s and my main courses arrived.

            He had ordered the Carbonara.  The sauce looked stodgy rather than silky but he seemed quite happy with it.  I did not try the Carbonara because I was too pre-occupied with my own food.  I ordered the Muscles Provencale and what the calamari lacked in content, the muscles certainly made up for.  I had a mountain to climb and I was game for the challenge.  The Provencale sauce was exceedingly tasty; it had been cooked long enough for the acidity to have left the tomatoes and for it to have thickened to a beautiful soup.  It was rich and smoky and the addition of preserved artichoke gave it a lovely saltiness.  This was probably increased by the addition of chorizo but, being a pescatarian of limited conviction I picked these bits out and tossed them onto my husband’s Carbonara which he confirmed was a welcome addition.  Readers, I ate them all.  I could hardly move afterwards for all the shellfish swimming around in my stomach.  All conversation had ceased for about thirty minutes whilst I undertook the task in hand.  As I came to, I realised that the disadvantage of a Provencale sauce as opposed to the typical Mariniere is that you get very mucky in the process of consumption.  My fingers made me look a bit like someone who’d committed murder but it was worth it.

            So there we are, stuffed and happy but the waiting staff were upon us instantly.  On the whole they were a gaggle of girls home for the holidays from their posh schools where they had evidently been honing the art of looking very bored at all times.  I know that they were not bonafide locals because they did not have the accent of pirates but then, very few of the inhabitants of Fowey are bonafide locals.  Anyway, did we want pudding?  Well, not really but we had some time to kill before our taxi, the only taxi in Cornwall on all accounts, arrived to collect us.  So, after perusing the usual selection of pre-prepared, gateaux-type sweets, one daughter ordered the cheese cake and the other ordered a scoop of vanilla ice-cream with a chocolate chip cookie.  My son, by this point, had fallen asleep.  I think this happened at some point during my ascent of the Moules Mountain but it’s hard to say.  The pudding arrived before we’d blinked.  The cookie turned out to be half a cookie; quite literally a modest sized cookie cut in half.  There is never any need to cut a cookie in half!  If I wasn’t so full of shell fish I may have said something.  The cheesecake, however, was of generous proportions.  It was served with a scoop of Cornish, clotted cream.  Cheese cake and cream?  It happens a lot and I could probably spread clotted cream on almost anything but really, it’s not a match made in culinary heaven, is it?  But still, my daughter was happy enough and proceeded with caution as her fish-shaped pizza was still in transit.  At one point she left to go to the loo and before you could say Daphne Du Maurier the efficient and officious matron of a waitress who clearly ran the show, had cleared away the plate.  Out of perversity, I demanded that the unfinished pudding be returned which of course was too late and so a half a piece of cheese cake was cut and placed in front of my daughter on her return from the lavatory.  Therefore, she sat down to a bigger portion than she had left behind which she found rather daunting and couldn’t finish.  I stepped in and polished off the last of it which was very good; there was just enough sourness of the cream cheese evident beneath all the sugar and cream.

            My husband ordered a sneaky g & t at the end just so that we could indulge in a little power-crazed snigger at all the people queuing up for our table for a bit longer.  It was a delightful evening and none of the imperfections was significant enough for us to withhold a tip.

Macbeth, RSC 2011

Macbeth

Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, 25^th August 2011

Today I took my ten year-old daughter to see her first performance of Macbeth.  She did not know the play and so I was eager to see her enjoyment (or otherwise) of the bloody plot as it enfolded.  It is hard to remember a time when I did not know the story of Macbeth and so I can only imagine the excitement and horror that must be elicited for an uninformed viewer.   We had excellent seats in the stalls where the actors felt close enough to touch.  Being a matinee, the audience seemed unusually alert.

As the performance begins, artificial light pours through the shattered windows of a ruined church.  This lighting effect was very satisfying as the impression of natural light was so convincing.  The setting of the purged church grounded the play nicely in its Jacobite origins.  After a hastily consumed, strong coffee shortly before the show I was somewhat jittery as the performance began.  Much talk has been given over to the three witches being played by children and so I was eager to see whether or not this reworking of the text was successfully spooky.  And lo, the sight of the three children hanging someway above the stage, corpse-like, as if swaying on the gallows was truly disturbing and I felt my caffeine-induced edginess increasing to something like nausea at this vision.  They are lowered to the stage and each unhooks the other from their ropes/nooses.  The children do this with a ghoulish look of knowing on their faces which has a Jamesian Turn of the Screw malice about it.  However, all this is shattered when the children utter their first lines.  Suddenly they are just children, with children’s sweetly high-pitched voices and their menace is reduced to nothing.  Even the echo that is added to their lines did nothing to dispel their quaintness.  The three excellent cellists, perched high up in front of the shattered windows were the only witchy reminder of ‘double, double toil and trouble.’

And enter Macbeth.  Unfortunately, Jonathan Slinger has an underwhelming stage presence and is a goosy looking man.  I found it hard to believe in his glory initially.  He is eclipsed by the physically huge and powerful presence of Banquo (Steve Toussaint) and I found myself imagining the two men exchanging their roles to greater effect.  It seems crucial to me that we, the audience, travel on a journey with Macbeth.  Pride comes before a fall, of course, and we must believe in Macbeth’s glory; we must feel his pride or we cannot fully abhor what he becomes.  But Jonathan Slinger has the voice projection and delivery of an old pro and Michael Boyd has made him into Macbeth, by hook or by crook, because he is an artless performer.  Indeed, his soliloquy of ‘To-morrow, and to-morrow’, delivered from the top of a ladder stretching into nowhere, is probably the best that I have heard.  This is where his talents lie.  Unfortunately, when he has to share the stage with his Lady Macbeth (Aislin McGuckin) he is once more eclipsed, this time by her cold and consummate performance.  Of course she dominates her husband but it is not necessary for her to appear so much the dominatrix both physically and mentally.  In the first scenes of them together Slinger is like a soppy dog to her Elizabeth I.  It was hard to imagine any chemistry between them and this was a shame as sexual greed goes hand-in-hand with the hunger for power.  My daughter said that she did not like Lady Macbeth, which, I suppose, is as it should be.

There were some nice touches elsewhere in the play.  Before the interval, the banquet scene takes place.  During which, the ghost of Banquo attacks Macbeth and brutally stabs him, leaving him covered in blood.  My daughter and I then went off to find the lavatories. This was no mean feat as the signs seem to send one round in an eternal loop.  However, we were soon alerted to the large queue for the Ladies stretching out almost to the Bancroft Gardens.  There was just time for us to grab some drinks and return to our seats for the second half.  For a play that deals with false meaning and equivocation the previous, liberal imagining of the text is replayed after the interval but without the figure of Banquo present.  We, therefore, get to see the madness of Macbeth as the other characters do.  As he doubles up to take the imagined blows from Banquo’s dagger, the audience laughs and for a moment the play has descended into farce and pantomime.  A welcome addition as far as my daughter was concerned.

Because ‘blood will have blood’ and perhaps because the ‘witches’ take up so much less time than the play dictates, other gory scenes are exaggerated to startling effect.  After Duncan’s murder, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth appear in white night dresses.  The blood is startling on Macbeth’s hands and clothing and we cannot help but anticipate his contaminating the white of Lady Macbeth’s garment.  Indeed, these characters wear white often in the play after they have committed their crimes, to aid the metaphor of disguise; the ones in white are not the virtuous ones.  The murder of Macduff’s children is played out on stage and there is not just one son but two sons and a daughter.  They are the same children who play the witches which gives the play a sort of cyclical and fatalistic intuition.  One has his throat slit, one has his neck broken which again brought to my mind The Turn of the Screw (but perhaps that was just me) and the daughter is sinisterly led off stage by one of the murderers whilst lady Macduff dies onstage as well. 

Jamie Beamish plays a crazed amalgamation of the porter and Seyton to great effect.  As he gives his speech about attending to the gates of hell the character lets off some bangers designed to appear like dynamite.  This caused us all to jump out of our skins; a few of the older members of the audience had strokes.  This allusion enhanced the image of the burning inferno but after the small explosions the theatre filled with the smoky smell of fireworks.  This in turn brought to mind the gunpowder plot which was apt and gave me a little smile at such trickery.

The play ends with the bloodied, victorious figure of Malcom standing amongst his followers.  Just as the RSC sends you in a circle to find their lavatories so too did the play end in a cyclical fashion.  Malcolm stands, as he did in the opening scene of the play, bloodied and surrounded by his supporters.  Only now he is King of Scotland rather than the King’s son.  Order is restored.  This seemed to be very satisfying to the audience whose applause were enthusiastic.  My daughter and I agreed that we had been heartily entertained.  I do not think that the children as witches delivered all that it should but I would not wish to criticise these innovative efforts.  I will just look forward to my next viewing of Macbeth complete with warty, cackling harridans.