words yvonne teh

Giles Burton talks about casting spells and the corruption of power

William Shakespeare looms so large over English culture it is hard to imagine that people have not heard of the Bard of Avon, at least some of his plays or even lines from them. In an interview with bc, Giles Burton, the director of the production of Macbeth that will be staged at the HK Arts Centre this April 30 to May 4, says that certain famous quotes from Shakespeare’s plays – among them, Macbeth’s “Is this a dagger I see before me?” – can be a real challenge to perform. Also, “All actors have this story of ‘I started on my ‘To be or not to be’ [when doing Hamlet] and I could see the audience miming along with me’!”

All joking aside, however, Burton says Shakespeare’s memorable quotes may be great on their own but in context they take on a whole new meaning. And even more so if, as he believes will be the case for some members of his audience, one is experiencing the play for the first time. “Shakespeare,” he asserts, “is not done that often in Hong Kong.”

The theatre professional – who originally hails from England but whose work has also taken him as far afield as New Zealand and the Czech Republic’s capital city, Prague – says he has seen many productions that assumed the audience knew the story. “I think people will have heard of Macbeth and know about the rough story but they won’t know the details,” he avers. “And I want that to bleed out. I’m a great believer that the most important people in the theatre are not the actors or director but always the audience. So unless you’re communicating with the audience, unless you make an assumption that people have no knowledge of [the play], don’t know the background, then I think you’d be on a hiding to nothing!

Warming to this subject, Burton stresses that, “I would be very disappointed if people came and weren’t able to follow the story just by seeing it on stage, seeing what’s going on.” That is one of the reasons he hasn’t changed much of the play. “I think that if you update it, change it,” he says, “people need to know a little bit about the background to start with.

“You can change the surroundings quite easily – you could reset Macbeth in Hong Kong, you could set it to high finance. I’ve seen it done in a kitchen where Macbeth is usurping the head chef.” But he didn’t want to mess around with it like that. So his version of the play with the “fantastic central dilemma about becoming powerful, gaining power, taking power, what it does to people” will be, as Shakespeare wrote it in the early 1600s to celebrate the ascension to the English throne of the Scottish James Stuart, a period drama set in Scotland about a man who has to face the consequences of becoming king by killing his predecessor.

Burton feels strongly as well about the play being performed in Shakespearian rather than updated English. “Shakespeare is a poet. So if you try to change the dialogue, you’ll take away that poetry and you’ll take away lots of double meanings and puns.” Furthermore, since Macbeth is the shortest of the Bard’s tragedies – with more than 1,000 lines fewer than the likes of Othello or King Lear – “I don’t see any need to cut it for time reasons.”

Nevertheless, Burton has taken the liberty of removing a scene “that’s almost certainly by a guy named Middleton” rather than by Shakespeare. Purely coincidentally, the director laughingly insists, that ‘Hecate scene’ is the one that supposedly contains real spells – which so angered witchcraft practitioners that they cursed the play – and now superstitious actors dare not pronounce its name if they’re not performing it!

“I’ve heard this,” confirms Burton, “but I don’t know enough about witches to know whether that’s true or not!” Cursed or not, he says the play is pretty full on, especially for its principal actor. “The rumour is that there were a lot of accidents at the end because the guy playing Macbeth is tired, so the fight goes horribly wrong. And there are a couple of known cases of people actually getting injured, things like that.” Which – touch wood! – is not something he anticipates for the Hong Kong run of Shakespeare’s Scottish tragedy.

Macbeth will be performed at the HK Arts Centre’s Shouson Theatre from April 30 to May 4. Evening shows start at 7:30pm while the May 3 and 4 matinees begin at 2pm. Tickets are $260 and $210 from URBTIX, 2734 9009.