Forbidding Title Hides Lively Entertainment

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30961, 18 January 1966, Page 12

Forbidding Title Hides Lively Entertainment

A rather forbidding title, “Macbeth in Camera,” disguises a lively entertainment which was presented by the Voyage Theatre Company in the Civic Theatre last evening. The entertainment comes, surprisingly perhaps, from a dramatised lecture on the theme that every word in Shakespeare, or any other playwright, will make good sense if it is married to the right action. Part of the fun comes when the four actors in the cast demonstrate the other possibilities: saying the words with magnificent sonority but with ridiculously inappropriate actions: saying the words without any action at all (“letting the beauty of Shakespeare’s language speak for itself”); or saving the words with actions which do not make sense in the over-all action of the play Harold I-ang, leader of the group, explains that “Macbeth in Camera" is based on a debate which actually took place between a certain scholar and the actors we saw last night We must take his word that the scholar was a “literary snob” to whom the relationship between action and the word was a revelation (the scholar presumably being unfamiliar with Hamlet’s instruc-

tions to the players?). The innocence of the literary man was given a charming credibility by David Kelsey’s urbane, cleverly quiet performance, but his intellectual position nearly always seemed a contrived fiction. The two actors (Nicholas Amer and Greville Hallam) acted with the somewhat crude enthusiasm of drama school students, but in this way did illuminate some of the searching experimentation which must go into the preparation of a play. Harold Lang, as the producer, bubbled with the extrovert personality which can inspire the creation of a viable play. A certain stageyness in gesture and movement was the price paid for attempting to recreate the spontaneity of the original debate, but any student of the theatre, and anyone who has any interest in Shakespeare will find “Macbeth in Camera” an arresting, stimulating statement of fundamental truths about the realisation of a dramatist’s intention.

“Macbeth in Camera” will be presented again tonight. The Voyage Theatre Company will also present two other programmes later this week. —P.R.S.