Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man?

Mention an outdoor performance of Shakespeare and it usually invokes the image of dusky summer nights spent sitting on tartan rugs, sipping champagne and nibbling at cucumber sandwiches. Children play around their doting parents, taking a first tentative paddle in the beauty of language.

For Biuro Podrozy's production of Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man?, take all those imaginings of midsummer frolicks and burn them. Because that is literally what the Polish company do. In a dark and brooding adaptation, weird sisters on stilts and flames galore initially give the audience the vain hope that a cinematic performance is about to ensue. Some truly interesting backing music, complete with a live opera singer, also lift expectations.

But then the actors come on.

In a break with over 400 years of tradition, the director of this epic determined to ascribe the part of Good King Duncan to a man dressed remarkably like Adolf Hitler. Stamping his feet impetuously and shooting a pathetic cap gun at a barely quacking underling, King Duncan soon ends up dead (I jumped forward a bit, but so did the script).

Although almost entirely devoid of any of the dialogue you may have bought your ticket to hear, this soon turns out to be a blessing in disguise as a rattling PA system relays the occasional heavily accented quotable quote.

The standard of acting is nothing short of appalling. A melodramatic Macbeth blunders around the courtyard stage on a Nazi motorbike wearing a neck-protecting helmet from the same era. The space is far too small for the number of Nazi war machines employed and the actors are frankly quite incompetent when it comes to using them.

As a final insult, the young Fleance is represented by a 20 something female in Hitler Youth lederhosen riding a circus bike. Look out for the Heil Hitler salute in the middle before you leave in disgust.