Review: Macbeth- Globe Theatre London 27th July 2016- Trump, Heat and Helicopters

I used to write reviews, long, pompous, pointless reviews where I would complain about various books, comics, television shows and movies that weren’t half as good, original, revolutionary, interesting or intellectually stimulating as I wanted them to be.

The motivation behind my reviews was to call-out the blatant leftist cultural programming that dominates and blights mainstream entertainment products. It’s in just about everything now, all liberal, all progressive, all leftist all of the time, and if nobody else was going to say anything about it, then, well, I guess I’d have to do it myself.

So I started a blog, and began to write.

I told people that they were being duped, lied to, programmed, treated like fools, idiots, clowns, and that the establishment left was laughing at them. They didn’t want to hear it. The young, male, feminised, passive, non participatory observers of the world, indoctrinated into leftist faux-intellectualism, where ‘news’ comes from late-night comedy programmes on mainstream liberal tell lie vision, got defensive, angry, refused to investigate, and continued to subject themselves to the same programming as before.

After all, dissenters such as myself can be easily dismissed and labelled with one, if not all of the pejoratives (racist, homophobic, misogynist, Islamaphobe, right wing nationalist etc etc) that the left uses in order to disregard all arguments against their self congratulatory sense of ideological purity. It doesn’t really matter that I am none of those things, the words are meant to demonise opposing views, to end debate and create a safe space for the liberals (hello Twitter) where no ‘hateful’ reality shall ever have to intrude.

The name-calling is a suicide bomb to public debate. The establishment left knows it and uses it to shut down all heretics to their new religion of social justice lies. It’s particularly insidious as it’s targeted at the young who need social approval and group acceptance more than anything else as they grow their social circles, careers and lives. Accept the lies and you will be accepted into the collective, question any of them (gender pay gap anyone?) and you are out of the club.

It doesn’t work on me. I’m older, and I never really wanted to join anything or anybody anyway. I’d rather tell the truth than fit in, but it’s a lonely furrow going against the grain. I did the reviews, and then I stopped, but not because I gave up. There was no path, so I’m making my own, writing my own narrative fiction. That is what I do now. I create my own worlds, the worlds that I was not seeing in the nonsense that I was reading and reviewing. It might take a long time for me to get anyway, but I’ll get there, or die trying. So yeah, I still write, a lot, and I’ll continue to write, but as for reviews, why should I even bother?

The four three weird sisters.

I’ve already said everything that needs to be said, and repeating myself is not my idea of fun. I don’t get paid for this you know. The people who write and produce leftist drivel don’t listen, and the people who consume it are not going to have their ideological cores changed by reviews that are only going to end up pissing them off. Leftists are cult members, they are programmed, they have their ideological religious beliefs, and that’s what they are going to stick to, forever.

What ‘ideological religious beliefs’ am I referring to?

Ah, come off it, you have to know by now, surely?

Here’s a list of the religious tenants of leftist cultural texts. Please let me know if I have missed out a few, as I’m 100% sure that I have:

White men are bad.
We need less white men in positions of power.
Christians are bad.
Christians are dumb.
Richard Dawkins can prove that there is no God.
Atheists are smart.
Be a smart atheist.
All religions are pretty much the same.
Islam is a religion of peace.
Capitalism is evil and unfair.
Girls are the future.
Men are the past.
Feminism is about equal rights for women.
MGTOW is for basement dwelling losers.
Islamic women are not as oppressed as western women.
Mass immigration (to the west only) is a great idea.
Anarchy is violence.
Statism is normal.
Taxation is justified.
Firearms are for agents of the state only, not citizens.
Democracy means freedom.
Black people in western countries are victims of ‘institutional’ racism.
Cops kill black people because cops are racists.
You can only be a racist if you are white.
The KKK are still a big deal in 2016.
Islam is a religion of peace.
The west is evil.
Single mum's are great at bringing up children.
Children do not need a strong and stable father.
Abortion is not child murder.
There is a 'rape culture' in the west.
Women are paid less than men for the same work.
Pro choice is pro woman.
Pro life is anti woman.
Divorce should be as easy as possible.
History is an indictment of western civilisation as a whole.
The only ‘pride’ will be black or rainbow coloured, talking of which.
Homosexuals are brave.
Don’t you dare say a bloody word, bigot.
Multiculturalism works.
Old racists voted for UK Brexit.
UKIP are racist.
Nation states are the past.
We are all globalists now.
Welcome to the New World Order of tolerance, diversity, respect and weekly ISLAMIC terrorist atrocities.
Nationalism is the enemy.
Right wing people are evil.
Socialism will work, eventually.
Don’t mention socialist democide numbers.
You are not a ‘Home Grown Demagogue’ are you?

That last one is the latest piece of political rhetoric from drone bomber Obama. I give him credit for that one, and yes, I know he probably didn’t come up with it himself, just like he didn’t write his own book, but he said it, and it encapsulates everything about the new establishment liberal elite. That clever little phrase merges two images, the (home grown) terrorist, and the demonic, dangerous, deceptive, manipulative, lying hate speaker. It puts into your mind’s eye the image of a ranting, white, male, right-wing, dangerous, deceiving dictator, and who is this all aimed at?

Feeling guilty?

Yeah, it’s Donald Trump, the man who is a ‘racist’ because he wants to help America become just as successful as the multi-billion dollar companies that he’s founded throughout his ridiculous high-achieving life. Of course it’s Donald Trump who is the big threat in the world today, not all of the tolerant liberals who have created the screwed up tinder-box that it currently is, and that brings me to this ‘review’ of Macbeth in the Globe Theatre, London 27th July 2016.

In the first half of the play, during a light moment of audience interaction, Donald Trump is compared to Satan, and the audience love it, whooping their support like the good little mainstream (Goldman Sachs) liberals that they are.

In this age of liberal domination of the arts and culture industry, everybody who disagrees with the left is considered to be evil beyond belief.

CONFORM<Nazi Hitler KKK Trump Scum>CONFORM

If you do not agree with progressive ideological mainstream consensus you are evil, you are a racist, you are a danger to all of humanity and you must be ridiculed, isolated, mocked, scorned and (preferably) shut up and immediately arrested.

I did not like the new Ghost Busters movie.

THAT’S HATE SPEECH

Of course it is, because if you disagree with the liberal elite’s you are a hater, you are Trump, you are a Nazi, you are Hitler, always bloody Hitler, never Stalin or Mao, always bloody Hitler, because socialist dictator Hitler is far worse than socialist dictator Stalin. Bloody leftists, you are driving me nuts with your faux-intellectualism and government worship imbecility.

Oh duck it, the far-too-long perambulation to this 'review' is boring me now.

Let’s get this on, here we go:

During this day-time performance of Macbeth I was accompanied by two highly irritating guests, the first being a persistent helicopter that continued to fly noisily over the theatre and the second being an intense heat-wave that threatened to melt my body like a wax candle in a furnace.

Obey, don't be a bigot, don't give in to hate.

The staff of the Globe theatre gave out free paper hats that offered perfunctory protection from the fiery ball in the sky, but it really was brutally relentless, and distracted enormously throughout the entire length of the play. How can I concentrate when my entire body feels like it is being subjected to radioactive blasts of sun fire?

The Helicopter, repeatedly flying over the theatre, and drowning out large sections of vital dialogue, was a factor outside of the Globe Theatre’s control, well not unless one of the liberals ‘moderate rebel’ friends from Syria used an Obama supplied RPG on it, but that’s another rant for another time.

What they (the actors) could, and should have done, was to moderate their performance. It would have been easy. All they had to do was to wait for the helicopter to pass by, improvise, act, use facials, do what you have to do in order buy some time, and then deliver the lines when they could be easily heard by the audience.

The actors choose not to do this, and talked (even in the quiet bits) with the noisy helicopter buzzing over the theatre, thus completely obliterating every other word that was being said.

This was my first experience of Macbeth, but even though I hadn’t seen the play before I had studied it in preparation and understood the basics of the plot, the characters, themes, etc. It didn’t appear to be too complicated a story, so I was expecting it all to be a smooth ride, however, early on, with the twin annoyances of the heat and the helicopter, I was struggling to follow what was going on. At the time I assumed it to be the outside factors, but in hindsight this wasn’t just an issue with the heat and helicopter, there were other problems that were stopping me from becoming fully immersed in the play.

Why were there four witches/weird sisters? Wasn’t there supposed to be three?

Why was there a little boy on the stage? I didn’t read anything about the Macbeth’s having a son in the sparknotes synopsis. What’s going on? Why is he there?

It took me a while to work out who was playing the character of MacDuff. I knew he was important, but I couldn’t for the life of me figure out who was who. For a while I thought he was the female actress who was strangely and confusingly cast as a man. Do the characters in the play not see that this ‘man’ is a very obvious lady putting on an unconvincing ‘manly’ voice? Are they all idiots? What is going on? Is this a Shakespeare thing? It confused me. Why not just have men playing the roles of men and women in the roles of women? It would certainly make things easier to understand, wouldn’t it?

Thinking back to the play now, as I write this already far too long review, I feel a sense of bewilderment, of seeing if from the outside, as a play, of never getting lost in it because of the confused nature of it’s staging. Why did the director have to be so awkward and make it so difficult for the audience to get into that suspension of disbelief mindset that you get from all good theatre, heck, even a decent pro wrestling match? That can’t be a deliberate thing, can it?

Heatwave.

My mind, already scrambling for sanctuary from the heat, started to go into complete meltdown as the play unfolded. I feel myself going back to the experience now, there I am sitting, why did I wear trousers? It’s too hot for trousers, and now I’m standing, in the yard, and I’m peering around heads, looking at the stage, and the confused disconnection within my head is just growing and growing. I want to dive in, to experience it as real, to lose myself, but it’s not possible, it’s not possible:

Why are the witches singing their prophecies to Macbeth rather than speaking clearly to him?  I can’t understand what they are saying. Was that something about his death? Dunno. I can’t quite make it out. Such a nice voice, but the words are being lost here.

Oh, here comes the helicopter again.

BUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

What was that? Was it something about a forest? I think, err, you what? Oh, okay, next bit now.

Oh, here comes Macbeth again, and he’s spitting phlegm all over the people standing at the front of the stalls, and he has blood all over his hands because he’s murdered the king, and he’s moaning to his wife because he feels bad about it.

Macbeth, you are a twat, please wash your hands, stop spitting and shouting, and go away.

Oh, and Lady Macbeth, she’s supposed to be a big deal, right? So why is she so blah, a stay at home/bored wife who keeps grabbing a less than aroused Macbeth as he moans and complains about his workday/career problems like a stressed out call centre manager. Nah, I’m not getting much interest out of her, or him, or their relationship. I neither like nor care about either of them. Oh, there’s the boy on stage again. Does she know him? Why is she ignoring him and why is the kid never mentioned in any of her dialogue?

I’m really confused now.

Awesome venue

Weak man, crappy nag of a rich housewife, a random boy who is never referenced in anything that either of the boring couple says, sod em both. Oh, is the boy supposed to be a ghost? I guess not, the boy is seen by all, they actually sit and play with him occasionally, it’s just not referred to. It’s a thing, but not a thing. This is jolting. It doesn’t work. It’s massively distracting and confusing. I’m detecting an unwise director’s meddling here.

Who are the heroes in the play? Oh, a wet guy and a sombre faced bloke who deserts his wife and kids, then goes overly melodramatic on hearing about their inevitable murder. So, a couple of weak, wet twats are the heroes, and we are supposed to care as they battle for power against evil/weak Macbeth and his nagging, comedy sleep walking bored rich housewife?

That can’t be right, can it?

Sucks.

Oh man, here comes the helicopter again.

BUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

HEAT HEAT HEAT

Goddamn it. I need shade, badly. Hang on, something about this all meaning nothing, that was a good line. Macbeth just shouted again and spat it out there, so all of this signifies nothing, means nothing, just noise and people clowning around playing roles, then?

I agree with that, especially in this context, nice one William.

Man, it’s hot, even in the shade, and I still can’t work out what that cute little kid is doing on stage. Do his parents know he’s up there? He doesn’t appear to have anything to do with the play. Perhaps one of the actors couldn’t get a babysitter for the afternoon?

BUUUUUUUUUUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Let's dance???

Sword fight prance, pretend stab, no realism here, be safe, health and safety mate, death off stage (boring) new wet king, err…..

Is that it?

Nope, the little boy has nicked the crown and now he’s sitting on the throne, and the audience is going ‘Ahhhh’ like it’s all very nice and cute. Oh, the wet bloke has noticed that there’s a little kid taking his place on the throne. He’s going to be angry and passionate for the first time in the play, oh, nope. He shrugs in indifference and doesn’t appear to care. Who is that boy again? Oh yeah, it was never explained, he’s just there, and now it looks like this is the end. Oh, umm, thanks for that new addition then.

Oh, this is odd. They are having a bit of a happy dance now, and all of the deceased characters are back, including the crappy Macbeth couple. Dance, dance, dance, yay, the crowd’s clapping like puppets on a string of Goldman Sachs’ sponsored liberal conformity, and all of this was meaningless.

Thank you for coming. Happy clappy, happy clappy, happy clappy, big smiles, and bow:

HUGE APPLAUSE FROM THE CROWD

And that was Macbeth on a very hot day in 2016, with a helicopter and lost child walking about on stage.

You’ll be pleased to read that my review is finally coming to it’s tragic, though certainly not mourned, end. It took up far too much of my time, and yours, so If you read it all the way to the end, first off, sorry, and secondly, as a final reward, a point will now be made. My review made a big old song and dance about not a lot, and it wasn’t really a review, but to the point, and it does have one, that should be very clear:

Please be kind, be nice, applaud and give me a three star rating for this review. I know it wasn’t very good, but I tried really, really hard. Okay, yes, I know that it really was very bad, and I’m being 100% honest with you now friend, buddy, old mate of mine. Yes, yes, yes, my review kind of sucks major elephant balls, but please, remember, I tried really, really hard, so please be nice. Look deeply into all of these words, there’s lots of them after all, and please see something that is not there. It could be there, if you want it to be. Take a hint, a reference, something, anything you like. It’s all yours now, just do the work yourself, take the formless jumbled up mass of letter, word, sentence, paragraph, whole, and bequeath upon me some faint praise for the sweaty sunburnt efforts of a man who used to, but no longer wastes his time writing long, pompous, pointless reviews.

Life

Reviews

Macbeth 27th July 2016

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

Review: ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at the Globe Theatre London: April 24th 2015

The Merchant of Venice
Written by: William Shakespare
Directed by: Jonathan Munby

CAST (MAIN)

Bassanio: Daniel Lapaine
Antonio: Dominic Mafham
Portia: Rachel Pickup
Shylock: Jonathan Pryce

Dates of Performances: 23 April - 7 June 2015

Venue: Globe Theatre, London

Website (for tickets and more info):
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/theatre/whats-on/globe-theatre/the-merchant-of-venice-2015



I always hated Shakespeare. It was hard, boring, far too dense and about as much fun as a science or maths class. As a school-kid it was just another waste of my time, something I had to suffer through before a lunch time kick about or skive in the local village.

A song and a dance

Yeah, Shakespeare really sucked to me as a kid, and sitting there in class trying to correctly pronounce all of those old words that nobody I knew ever used was a completely joyless experience. By the time I left school at the age of sixteen years old I was glad that I would no longer have to suffer through any more classes of his hard to understand and completely fun free books.

I wasn’t that unusual as a kid. We all hated Shakespeare, the boring old git, and that was that. Fast forward twenty six years in the future though and here I am, standing in the ‘Yard’ of the Globe Theatre in London. What am I doing here? Is it a new job, or something I have to suffer through to pay the bills? No, I chose to go there, to give it a chance, and what I am experiencing is nothing whatsoever like what I had to suffer through as a kid.

This play, ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ is a bit good, the actors are amazing and it’s not even difficult to follow what is going on. It’s fun, it’s entertaining and I’m enjoying every second of it. Shakespeare isn’t supposed to be fun, is it? I’m watching this boring old Shakespeare play, and laughing at the funny bits, becoming completely involved with the serious bits, and having the best theatre experience of my entire life.

Love is in the air

What happened to me? Shakespeare was supposed to suck, but he didn’t. His play was pretty bloody good, funny, and it was saying things that people are scared to say today. We are talking about the J word here, yeah the play was about Jews, or one Jew in particular, a money lender, a man called ‘Shylock’ who was so full of anger and hate caused by the way he had been treated by good Christian folk, that he was prepared to cut a pound of flesh from the breast of a man rather than collect the huge sum of money that was owed to him. This Shylock was even prepared to do it himself, showing what a heartless, brutal character he really was, sharpening his knife and sorting out his scales, just to make sure he did a really proficient job of it.

Would you want to cut out a man's flesh in this manner, and do it with a little knife and then carefully place it on some scales? Would you even be capable of doing something as brutal as that? I wouldn’t, and wouldn’t this pound of flesh thing also kill the man? And why was the man strung up like he was being prepared for a crucifixion? What was that about?

Ahhh, I get it now. This wasn’t about revenge or anything like that, it was about mercy and how the Jewish people showed none to Jesus Christ, allowing him to be crucified, instead choosing to free a murderer called Barabas. So what this play (written in about 1596) was doing was giving the Jewish people another chance, another shot at showing mercy to a defenceless Christian.

Shylock is determined to have his pound of flesh

So when Shylock refuses, and insists on his pound of flesh, what is that saying? It’s saying that Jewish people are incapable of showing mercy, of forgiveness, of the very quality that defines the entire teachings of Christian morality. The only way that the character of Shylock can be redeemed is for him to be forcibly converted to Christianity and to renounce his Jewish faith.

It’s strong stuff isn’t it? Would you get away with saying something like that today? No chance mate, no chance at all, the accusations of anti-Semitism would bury your play before it even got through the first couple of performances, but because it’s ‘Shakespeare’ it can be put on in 2015 and nobody is going to say a word about it.

Amazing.

A play written in 1596 is more controversial than anything that I will see on television, screen or theatre in 2015. It says a lot, don’t you think?

I was standing there in the ‘Yard’, having paid a measly £5 to get in, and was in absolute awe. Not just because the play was far more controversial than I thought it would be, but because of the performances by a ridiculously talented cast, and the audiences reaction to it all as well. This was red-hot theatre, performed before an enraptured, packed audience, and I was being swept away to another era, a time when Shakespeare was alive, and this was the best show in town.

Shylock and his traitorous daughter

What am I saying? There’s a time portal at the Globe, and the best performance in town is simultaneously occurring in the 1600’s and in 2015 as well. The Merchant of Venice is the best show in town, of course it is, it always was, and it still is today.

Dominic Mafham, as Antonio, was exceptional. The melancholy of his character as written in the previews I had read before the play appeared to be self-indulgent and weak, but to see him brought to life by this fantastic actor was quite a revelation to me. I left the theatre feeling more intrigued about what was going to happen to that one character alone than any of the other characters in the play. His melancholy had substance, and the performance by Mafham nailed that substance, creating a person where before I had only read a character in a play.

Jonathan Pryce, as the villainous Shylock, was unbelievable. Like every great performer he bristled with charisma, with presence, with electricity, and when he was on stage it was almost impossible to train your eyes away from him, even when all of the dialogue was coming from the other characters. His mannerisms, his facial tics, his anguish, his pain, his need for revenge, his frustration, his joys at the misfortunes of others, the body language, the gestures. Oh my God, this guy was ridiculous. Jonathan Pryce was beyond exceptional, a man at the top of his game giving a performance directly in front of me that I could scarcely believe I was witnessing.

The spellbounding Jonathan Pryce as Shylock

If you are going to London, or if you live in London, or live anywhere near London, then you need to go to London NOW.

Forget your school day classrooms where bored English teachers slowly killed Shakespeare, line by painful line, and go to the Globe theatre and see it performed as it supposed to be performed.

The Merchant of Venice runs until 7th June, so see this wonderfully performed play if you can, but if you can’t get there for then check the schedules and go to see another play instead.

Any play will do, just get there for the early evening performance, pay your £5, stand in the yard, get aching feet, get close to the stage and experience Shakespeare as it’s meant to be experienced.

I always hated Shakespeare, but not now. The Merchant of Venice in 2015 is the best show in town. Controversial, funny, electric, and full of powerhouse performances by world class performers. If you just want to boil it all down, take away the history, the snobbery, the reputations and all of the baggage, what it really is, is a wonderful night’s entertainment at the theatre.

Banish those painful memories of old school English classes and reading dusty old books that you didn’t understand or give a toss about. See Shakespeare in the flesh, see it at the Globe, and then you’ll finally begin to understand just what all the fuss has been about.

Rating: 10/10 (A controversial, funny, intense play that features ridiculously accomplished performers)