Lady Macbeth, performed as part of the first Hong Kong International Shakespeare Festival, is a starkly powerful piece of dance theatre that takes a novel approach to its source material.
Created in 2018 by Italy’s imPerfect Dancers Company and choreographed by the company’s artistic directors, Walter Matteini and Ina Broeckx, it has been restaged in collaboration with Hong Kong Dance Company (HKDC), whose dancers performed it magnificently.
Lady Macbeth is not an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but begins where the play ends. After their deaths, Macbeth and his wife find themselves in a kind of purgatory where they are forced to continually relive the events brought about by their actions when they were alive.
Full of highly charged emotion, it opens with Lady Macbeth desperately trying to wash her hands clean of blood – a direct reference to Shakespeare and a recurring action for both her and her husband throughout the piece.
The theme of blood is echoed in their costumes: glamorous evening clothes covered in bloodstains. They are haunted and tormented by four other characters: the three witches whose malignly deceptive predictions set Macbeth and his wife on their fateful course, and Banquo, the friend Macbeth has had killed to further his ambitions.
Accompanying the action is an eclectic, yet effective selection of music drawn from the works of 17th and 18th century composers Vivaldi, Scarlatti and Bach and 20th and 21st counterparts Ezio Bosso, Max Richter and Philip Glass.
In clever reference to Shakespeare, the music is interspersed with the sound of the wind howling across the play’s “blasted heath” and, at one key point, the bell which Lady Macbeth rings as the signal for her husband to murder Duncan.
The piece conveys with unsettling power the idea of being trapped in limbo, with no escape from unending guilt, remorse and shame.
At its heart is the relationship between the Macbeths, which alternates between violent confrontation as they blame each other for their predicament and tenderness – the strength of their love for each other is evident, however dark and complicated that love may be.
In a deeply moving section towards the end the couple hold hands for a long time, then Lady Macbeth sits on the ground and her husband lays his head in her lap. Briefly and poignantly they find peace until the spell is broken by screeches from Banquo and the witches and their suffering begins again.
Matteini and Broeckx’s choreography has real originality and is characterised by its bold athleticism – high leaps which end in crashing falls, brutal lifts, cartwheels, handstands and frenzied, seizure-like movements.
Particularly arresting is the way the witches’ bodies form contorted shapes which give a vivid impression of creatures not quite human.
The style is radically different from anything HKDC’s dancers have done before and they rose to the challenge in breathtaking style, with blazing energy and giving a sense of abandon which could be achieved only through superb technical skills.
Long one of Hong Kong’s most outstanding dramatic dancers, Hua Chi-yu brings almost unbearable intensity to Lady Macbeth, matched by Lee Chia-ming’s ferocious yet lost Macbeth. Ong Tze Shen shows off his thrilling technique as Banquo, while Huang Wenjie, Tong Chi-man and Ho Gi-lam give a spectacular account of the witches.
Design is minimalist – the only “scenery” is a cage with two red crowns which hangs above the stage, a grim reminder to the Macbeths of their relentless pursuit of power and its terrible consequences.
Clouds of dust occasionally billow across the stage and at the end a stream of dust pours down, illuminated in baleful red. Visually striking though this may be, as I have said before using dust like this is problematic. It is unpleasant for the audience (although masks were provided) and above all unhealthy for the dancers.
“Lady Macbeth”, Hong Kong Dance Company, Big Box, Freespace, West Kowloon Cultural District. Reviewed: June 8.