Perth Festival: Hecate ★★★★

Adapted and translated from William Shakespeare’s Macbeth
by Kylie Bracknell and Dr Clint Bracknell

Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company

in association with Bell Shakespeare

Directed by Kylie Bracknell

Set and costume designer Zoë Atkinson

Lighting designer Mark Howett

Composer, musical director and sound designer Dr Clint Bracknell

Dramaturg Kate Mulvany

Subiaco Arts Centre until 16 Feb

One fell swoop (pic Dana Weeks)

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

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.

Perhaps the greatest passage in all of Shakespeare, ‘Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow’ is the radioactive core burning in the heart of the nuclear reaction that is Macbeth.

I reproduce it in full for the sheer marvel of its genius: ‘To the last syllable of recorded time’, with its intimations of galaxies and eternities in seven words, never fails to astound me.

Leave aside its bleak part in the rise and downfall of the homicidal king, its withering insight into his character and psychology, or the opportunities (and histrionic perils) it gives to the actor performing it, these ten lines stand as one of the most powerful and formative achievements of the English language.

And it is language, more than plot, or character, or even performance, that makes Hecate, a skilfully reconstructed but essentially faithful retelling of Shakespeare’s tragedy entirely in the Noongar language of South-Western Australia, so remarkable.

Both these plays mark a critical moment in the histories of their respective languages. In Macbeth’s case, it comes at the apogee of the decade from 1597 to 1607 – from Henry IV to Antony and Cleopatra – when Shakespeare unleashed the full potential of the English language; in the case of Hecate, at the point where the ancient Noongar language rises back from near-obliteration to demonstrate its emotional power and continuing viability.

For this much credit is due to a band of senior Noongar people who kept their language alive (the Hecate programme notes that of the 30,000 people who identify as Noongar, only two per cent speak the language at home, although that number is rising).

In the context of this production, the grand endeavour of the former artistic director of Yirra Yaakin, Kyle Morrison, who, eight years ago, conceived the “Noongar Shakespeare project” that has already taken translations of the sonnets to the Globe Theatre in London, cannot be praised enough.

High among his greatest achievements is his willingness to gift the realisation of his dream on to others, to the director Kylie Bracknell, who, with her husband Clint, also adapted and translated Shakespeare’s text, and, finally (I understand), the role of Macbeth to the distinguished Noongar actor Maitland Schnaars.

Morrison’s reward, which he celebrated so exuberantly at the end of the opening night’s performance, was to see his work come to reality (and also, it should be noted, his own magnetic performance in a number of supporting roles in the production).

Now to the play (which, after all, is the thing).

One of the defining ideas of this interpretation of Macbeth is the elevation of Hecate to its title role. In the original, Hecate (in Greek mythology the Goddess of magic and witchcraft; in Shakespeare the sovereign of the ‘weird sisters’ who trigger Macbeth’s downfall) only appears very briefly – indeed there’s compelling technical evidence that Shakespeare may not have written the character, that may have been inserted later by another hand.

Here she (Della Rae Morrison) is the observer of all that befalls, a seer and a spirit protector of boodjar – the land, a comforter of the distressed.

Her witches are replaced by an ensemble of ‘mischief-makers’, played at one time or another by all the rest of the nine-member cast.

These changes by Bracknell and the dramaturg Kate Mulvany (my God, that woman must sleep no more!) give the narrative and staged action a fluidity and vigour in which Shakespeare’s original characters, Macbeth, Lady Macbeth (Bobbi Henry), Banquo (Rubeun Yorkshire) Macduff (Ian Wilkes) Malcolm (Mark Nannup) and Duncan (Trevor Ryan) live and die.

Their names are the only words in English – I lie, I think there’s one English phrase slipped mischievously into the script, like the single upside-down panel in an otherwise perfectly symmetrical Japanese temple frieze. 
And be prepared: there are no subtitles, and a plan I believe was once in place to provide a plot summary in English before each act was replaced by a synopsis in the programme. Bravo, I say!

Apart from those structural changes, the familiar storyline is told with little deviation from the original; Banquo’s ghastly appearance at Macbeth’s banquet is there, as are the murderers’ fell swoop on Macduff’s wife and pretty ones, the woods closing in on Macbeth and, in the end, Macduff’s revenge in a brutal fight to the death with hands shaped as daggers, superbly choreographed by Yorkshire and performed – danced really – by Schnaars and Wilkes.

The creative team for Hecate deliver outstanding results: Zoë Atkinson’s cascading set of rough panels, screens and abysses frames the action brilliantly, while lighting designer Mark Howett continues his triumphant Perth festival (his work on Buŋgul is simply amazing) with blood-red and ice-blue washes of dark colour across the set, faces and forms etched against the blackness behind.

I left Hecate with a selfish reservation. For many Noongar people, their language is in the process of rediscovery, and, unavoidably, its expression is a conscious effort that showed in sometimes-laboured delivery of the text.

After the show, though, in the wonderful gathering place created as an adjunct to the play in the Subiaco Arts Centre gardens (which, incidentally, I think of as my own boodjar, around which my children were born and schooled, my family lived worked and played), I listened to Bracknell and Morrison speak of their deep reverence for Shakespeare, of their love of their own language and the long challenge for it to return to that unconscious, natural fluency and eloquence it would once have had.

Hecate is one imperfect, sometimes halting, but courageous and ultimately triumphant step towards that goal, while we wait for a Noongar Shakespeare to emerge to unleash its full potential.