Het Vijfde Bedrijf – The Fifth Act
(The Netherlands)
Edinburgh College Of Art Venue 50.
1hr5mins, PG
Being all things the antithesis of a society hostess, Lady MacBeth, a mother grieving for her lost infant, invokes Satanic succor to commit regicide by displacement proxy. Subsequently goes insane. Finally commits suicide. Thus, in the Scottish Play, her candle burns fiercely but briefly.
But, how things might have been so different if she had but confided in her devoted lady-in-waiting recently risen from swineherd/kitchen-skivvy to her now intimate status. This one-lady show, part eulogy for a fallen Queen, part visceral rant at Shakespeare’s (possible!) dismissive misogyny for writing her as dumbed-down foil to the bumbling Doctor’s observations as Lady M, descends into guilt-ridden insanity, and really should set The Fringe ablaze. She has some other serious issues with the bard that merit spleen-venting of a decidedly perspirational profuseness. And, just why a pissed Porter gets a whole soliloquy of duff jokes, even by the Bard’s low standard of groundling pleasing gags, really gets her goat.
We see character role-play shifting with seamless dexterity as, Dutch actress, Annemarie de Bruijn, revels in her interpretive battle to unlock the psycho-dynamism that drives ambitious people to leap from the pinnacle of achievement in to a bloodbath of hubris.
Along the way we gain valuable culinary insights as to how one can best prepare haggis using a black balloon. With unlimited licence and experimental surreality taken as a given, Bruijn’s tour-de-force performance explodes with passionate rage and helpless, tender incredulity as she eves-drops on her mistress’s conspiratorial regicide. The minimalist set and evocative use of light and shadow create an atmosphere of seething mystery and unspoken fears. That ‘blood will have blood’ she is powerless to prevent. Our focus of impending horror centres on a red, silken bed pillow. Redolent in potent symbolism it is a precursor to her now ugly drunken Lady’s imminent self-immolation. She can but observe, lamenting, something to the effect, that she only ‘…begs with a token of her love, devotion and loyalty/and vows of silent complicity.’
Unquestionably and unequivocally an Edinburgh Reporter Fringe must-see.
