If that's all there is @ the BAC

If that’s all there is, like Cheek by Jowl’s Macbeth, examines marriage through the prism of a couple's fractured psyches: their fantasies, insecurities and neuroses. But where the Declan Donellan’s Scottish tragedy is dark, regimented and threatening, the latest piece by in vogue company, Inspector Sands, is colourful, anarchic and liable to leave you with a very pleasant warm fuzzy feeling. Not to say that ITATI is saccharine or insubstantial, quite the opposite: from the alternative wedding cake made entirely of cheese, which Daniel, the groom (Ben Lewis), describes at length during his gloriously vapid wedding speech, to the onions which Frances, the bride (Lucinka Eisler), smears over her face while watching tele-novellas, the piece is flavoured with an array of tragi-comic images.

Scenes are held together more by association than narrative, but the play is loosely structured around the weeks leading up to Daniel and Frances’ wedding day. Disconcerted by his future spouse’s erratic behaviour, Daniel consults a psychologist (Giulia Innocenti) to find out what is wrong with her. Instead, he ends up revealing his own compulsive nature, as he hands over reams of pie charts and statistics describing her behaviour and past. Simultaneously, we follow Frances’ day to day at work as she tells the hapless intern (also Giulia Innocenti) to photocopy the same document individually 200 times, or steals another woman’s wedding gift on her lunch break.

Ben Lewis pushes Daniel’s dullard persona to the point of pathology; like the graphs by which he seems to live his life, his personality might have been formatted using Windows 95. At the same time, there is something inescapably familiar about the character: “nice but dull” is, by all accounts, the middle-class English male’s refuge of choice from emotional openness and availability. Straight as a poplar and almost quivering under the strain of her own anxieties, Lucinka Eisler’s is an equally fascinating creation: her yearning for melodrama stretches so far as dreaming her husband has been shot at the wedding reception. The third performance is as studied as the other two, but complements them perfectly: Giulia Innocenti knits the scenes together, switching between wise-fool psychologist and shuffling intern as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Together, the three company members present an abundance of invention in perfectly-timed comic sequences, yet their style retains a helter-skelter, homemade aesthetic.

I’ve heard Inspector Sands’ work described as “physical theatre”, but the term, apart from always sounding vacuous to me (is there such a thing as “unphysical theatre”?), sells the company short when it comes to the script. The dialogue lacks for neither pace nor wit, and a couple of the speeches build rivetingly high definition pictures (eat your heart out, Sky); and while the piece delights in non-literal escapades, the “movement-based” mantel is lightly worn.

The company are currently working on a new commission for the 2010 Edinburgh International Festival, which will be one to look out for this summer, but in the mean time we’ll have to make do with mental snapshots of a marriage made in heaven between three very talented performers.

Cheek by Jowl's Macbeth @ The Barbican

Cheek by Jowl’s production of Macbeth focuses on the eponymous Lord and Lady almost to the exclusion of other characters. Indeed, most of the thanes (Ross, Lennox, Angus etc.) are indistinguishable, simply belonging to the same ensemble / chorus of young men who create the world surrounding the main characters. The design, too, is bare, with the set consisting of oversized wooden crates lining each side of the stage, evocative, at various points, of the castle and Birnam Wood, or simply generating an overbearing claustrophobia by virtue of their height and presence. Props are entirely absent (except in the Porter’s scene), meaning letters, daggers, food and deaths being mimed (often rather enthusiastically – there is some danger of straying into Marcel Marceau territory).

Thus, the production becomes, to a large extent, a dissection of the Macbeths themselves – their fantasies, their nightmares, their marriage – and Will Keene and Anastasia Hille offer forensically detailed portraits of the murtherous couple. As Lady Macbeth, Hille is unusually touching – central to her performance is the love she bears her husband and the devastating effect of his gradual distancing from her as he retreats ever further inside his own mind. While never straightforwardly charismatic, Keene lends Macbeth an intensity which makes him a natural leader of men, particularly in a military context, but also fuels his descent into madness. The same manic energy which, coupled with his ambition, elevates him to the rank of King, reduces him to a quivering wreck in the presence of supernatural apparitions.

David Collings offers a contemplative take on Duncan and Kelly Hotten gives us a vivid porter – all flaming red hair, mini-skirt and Glaswegian brogue – but it is as an ensemble piece that the production is most distinctive. There are two main forces at play, dramatically speaking: the Macbeths and the ensemble. When the latter has purpose and unity, the production is at its best. The witches and apparitions are particularly compelling: silhouettes of the entire cast can be made out through a fog behind Macbeth (and Banquo, in the first witches' scene); the lines are spoken by the two female cast members and echoed in whispers by a host of male voices; Macbeth (and Banquo) speak their lines straight out, placing their necromantic tormentors somewhere in the audience. The effect is (pun intended) bewitching, and impressive in the way it thrusts imaginative engagement upon the audience as a requisite to appreciating the piece. Combined with the Spartan aesthetic, it also puts the audience in the same position as Macbeth in trying to separate truth from illusion: since nothing is physically present on stage, apart from the actors, there is no immediate way of telling what is real and what is not.

However, the ensemble is not always such a potent force, which is where the production fails to deliver on its promise. All through Act V, the male chorus (or “thanes” as they are collectively referred to in the programme) stand around on stage doing not very much. As a fluid, abstract unit, they might have been able to pull it off, but they have too particular an appearance: with their meticulously gelled hair, black combats and boots, and designer belt buckles they suggest something between boy band members and über fashion-conscious Hitler Youth. Indeed, throughout the first few scenes I imagined this look was going to be used as part an exploration of fascism, but the production never delivers an overtly political interpretation. The result is that the chorus provides a distraction as much as it provides the texture of the universe which the Macbeths inhabit.

Part of the problem must be that ensembles are something of a lost art in the UK. A couple of months ago, visiting Munich, I shocked a German friend of mine when I admitted I could only think of one semi-permanent acting ensemble in England which is attached to a theatre – the RSC. “They don’t even have an ensemble at the National Theatre?” he asked. “Not even at the National.” Off the top of his head, he was able to name four permanent ensembles in Munich alone. I know that Cheek by Jowl is just as much as an international company as it is a British one, with many of their productions starting off in France and then touring the entire world, but they still change casts for every production and rehearse for just six weeks – a very British way of working. True, the cast continue to receive direction throughout the run (a large number of British directors give notes until the very last performance), but this is hardly a substitute for building up a body of work, as a company, over a number of months or years.

The underworked ensemble is, for me, where Cheek by Jowl’s Macbeth stops short of becoming an unstoppable force; it remains an intelligent, well-acted production, but without the sinew to completely bowl an audience over.