Reviewer: Peter Wilkins
With its Best Theatre Award under the arm, Jethro
Compton’s company dismantles the World War 1 trench, constructed in a city
warehouse and returns to England with its highly acclaimed The Bunker Trilogy. I have already written about Agamemnon, the first in the trilogy, but
it would be remiss of me not to place this stunning piece of work in the
context of the entire trilogy. Compton and his team have devised an ingenious
theatrical event, most timely because of the occasion of the centenary of the
commencement of the First World War.
Each work, inspired by Aeschylus’s Oresteia, the Arthurian legend and
Shakespeare’s Macbeth concerns itself
with war and its impact on those who wage war for greed, power, national
security or in hatred. Agamemnon
examines the effect of war on those who wage it, those who serve it and those
who are left behind to cope with its consequences. Human need turns to human
requital for perceived wrongs. In Morgana,
war’s inevitable impact on relationships exposes courage, cowardice, command
and the nature of human behaviour under the stress of war.
Unlike Agamemnon
and Morgana which adapt the myth to
give it resonance in the circumstance of the Great War, Compton decides to
stage Shakespeare’s actual text in the bunker. Macbeth is after all a noble and
courageous soldier, condemned by his fatal flaw to a vengeful fate. Perhaps
this realises the possible imperfection of any deviance from the original
perfection. Perhaps it is because Shakespeare’s tale of ambition and
destruction would only suffer by comparison.
Whatever the motive, the decision to stage
Shakespeare’s play lends a rather perplexing note in the context of the entire
trilogy. This in no way denigrates the talents of Compton’s team of three male
actors and the one female, all of whom perform in more than one of the trilogy
and some in all three. The acting is exemplary and immediate, powerful in its
proximity and riveting in its intensity. As audience, our involvement is inescapable
as the actors breathe life into their characters within a couple of metres from
us, and at times almost upon us as they sweep past the front benches in a
moment of high drama.
The crowded setting is perfect for a sense of
absolute inclusion and for the creation of suspense in Agamemnon, tension-relieving humour, counterpoised by moments of school
day intimidation in Morgana and
violent ambition in Macbeth. The Bunker
Trilogy is a cleverly constructed conceit that leaves an audience in no
doubt as to the intention to illuminate war in its many guises. In Agamemnon, the bunker also acts as the
English home of the soldier who has enlisted and deserted his wife to serve his
country as well as the trenches that lead off stage to No Man’s Land. In Morgana, the bunker also serves as Morgana’s
village.
The names of the characters leave us in no doubt of
their references. Arthur (Hayden Wood) is the commanding officer. Lancelot (Sam
Donnelly) serves as lieutenant and Gawain (James Marlowe) is the inexperienced private,
who seek the Holy Grail of love and is eventually sacrificed on the brutal
field of battle. The audience is at first beguiled as they are invited to join
in Christmas carols and are entertained by vaudeville routines and jokes that
recall the schooldays of the three schoolboy friends. Gradually the play turns
into a baiting game of bullying as Lance taunts Gawain while Art can feel
himself losing his grip when Lance reveals his love for Art’s wife Gwendoline.
The references to the Arthurian legend are glaringly
obvious and are enriched by a knowledge of the source, while still elucidating
the themes within an integral theatrical experience.
War in all its facets is cleverly interwoven
throughout the trilogy, clearly demonstrating its effect on individual soldiers
and their responses, on the relationship between soldiers in the face of battle
and death and on those who remain behind, and the women in particular.
Clytemnestra
(Bebe Sanders) enacts an extreme vengeance to punish her husband for his
indiscretions. Leaving her for the battlefield and having an affair with a
Belgian prostitute. Hardly just cause for murder, but these are extraordinary times
and people are compelled to commit extraordinary acts. Our willing suspension
of disbelief is justified in the knowledge that war changes people.
Morgana (Bebe Sanders) weaves her spell and leads Gawain
to his death. Lady Macbeth too wields her power over her soldier husband and
yet is drawn inextricably into his web and ultimately his fate. Compton’s view
of war offers no redemption and we are struck by its inane futility and
damaging consequence.
In The Bunker Trilogy’s Macbeth, there is no surprise. There is some juxtapositioning of
text and action with Macbeth’s defiant command to “Hang out our banners on the
outward walls” commencing the performance, and concluding his terrible deeds in
the inevitable cycle of Fate’s journey. There are imaginative touches, having
the witches portrayed as soldiers in gas masks and Siward appearing in a gas
mask as a prophet of doom to announce the arrival of Birnam Wood.
To audiences less familiar with the text, The Bunker Trilogy version of Shakespeare’s tragedy may be gripping and powerful, and expressive of the destructive force of “vaulting ambition which o’erleaps itself” Perhaps any attempt to adapt Macbeth to an imagined story as Compton has done with Agamemnon and Morgana would simply have trivialized the plot and themes of the Scottish play.
However, as I said, there is no denying the
ingenuity of the concept, the outstanding acting, the powerful impact of the
bunker setting and the strong production values that contribute to a piece of
theatre that is absorbing, illuminating, moving and memorable long after one
leaves the theatre.