Conflicting accents dampen Kapoor’s contemporary production of Macbeth

What’s done is done’ is the illustrious line from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, which incidentally also happens to be the title of actor-director Rajat Kapoor’s contemporaneous projection of Macbeth. The performances of the actors were good but their accents were inconsistent. For instance, from the soft Spanish ‘T’ they slipped into the English ‘T’ — this was mostly done by Macbeth himself, otherwise the play went off well. Presented by ADVAIT Productions, Kapoor’s What’s Done Is Done was staged at the Sri Sathya Sai Baba Auditorium, New Delhi on November 6.

Actor Ranvir Shorey held the production together with his histrionic acts. First, as a doubting recipient of the good news given by the three witches, and then later, committing to the crime of killing the king himself.

The scenes between him and Banquo, especially the dialogue delivery after his death when Banquo’s ghost confronts him was not very impressive. The raving and ranting at his wife’s demeanour was not very convincing. However, the scene where Banquo and Macky B make the play contemporaneous with India’s political and social settings (the Robert Vadra angle) was very superb.

The other characters portrayed by actors Vinay Pathak (Pedro) and Jim Sarbh (Julio) had excellent comic timing. Their comic escapades were creditably done with a lot of slapstick humour. The three witches opened the play and they went on to play the three faces of Lady Macbeth played by Tilotama Shome, Mansi Multani and Sheena Khalid. The three were very well cast as they performed in unison every aspect of Lady Macbeth and the three witches.

The scene of the arrival of King Duncan in Macbeth’s castle was well choreographed and effective as an opening until his death by killing. The “out out damned spot” scene of Lady Macbeth trying to remove the imaginary blood stains from her hands was not effective because it was cut short by the director to “All the perfumes of Arabia cannot sweeten this little hand.” The scene of the forest approaching Macky B, was not shown at all but merely spoken by Macbeth in a descriptive form.

The costumes and make-up was good but the lighting could have been better. ADVAIT started in Delhi recently and presented What’s Done Is Done as an opening play. The evening was also dedicated to Akshara Theatre with a shawl being presented to Jalabala Vaidya, the wife of Gopal Sharman who died recently and he was responsible for the creation of the Akshara Theatre, right from the cleaning of the surroundings of the house gifted to them by Morarji Desai under the ‘eminent artistes quota’, to the honing of the teakwood into chairs for the audiences. Sharman was a writer, theatre critic and the director of the Ramayana, which featured Jalabala in a solo performance playing 21 characters.