REVIEW: The HandleBards’ biker-groovy Macbeth, York Theatre Royal ***

Something wickedly funny this way comes: Jenny Smith, left, Natalie Simone and Kathryn Perkins as the ‘Weird Sisters’ in The HandleBards’ Macbeth

The HandleBards in Macbeth, York Theatre Royal, tonight (26/1/2022) at 7.30pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk

THE Scottish Play becomes The Skittish Play when recycled by eco-conscious pedalling enthusiasts The HandleBards in pursuit of daft laughs on their return to York Theatre Royal.

Tragedy takes a hike up the Scottish Highlands, soliloquys lose out to a rising cacophony of noise, and The Porter’s knock-knock interlude vanishes like the secret midnight hags into the dreek mists.

Often cut for being Shakespeare’s one (not-very-funny) comic interlude, as unwelcome as a drunken heckler, presumably this time Macbeth’s bouncer has been axed for being the one character that did not require conversion to comedy.

The HandleBards like to break down barriers, as Emma Sampson’s cast demolishes theatre’s fourth wall from the off when perky Kathryn Perkins, towering Natalie Simone and professional debutante Jenny Smith introduce themselves and who they will be playing. These days, it is called meta-theatre, a form of heightened awareness that a play is indeed all about playing.

Crowning gory? Kathryn Perkins’ hell-for-leathers Macbeth

Or it could just be that The HandleBards just want to “shake a spear” at all that seriousness that emanates from so many Shakespeare productions.

Macbeth has broad shoulders and can pretty much take anything you throw at it, on stage or screen, although there was one time on a Leeds stage where the lead actor was so hapless that he not only murdered all around him, he murdered Macbeth.

That does not happen here, but Perkins’ Cockernee Artful Dodger Macbeth does tend to play second fiddle to the weird sisters, the Witches pulling Macbeth every witch way, every which way in this all-female production.

If you want punk irreverence, you will find it here, not least in the biker costume designs of Lucy Green that echo the Seventies’ clobber of Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, tartan trim and all.

Jenny Smith’s Donalbain in The HandleBards’ Macbeth

Cycling paraphernalia is omnipresent too, from the bell to signify scene changes to the tyres on the Macbeth’s biker jacket; from the bicycle pedalling that provides the power for scenery to turn around to the honking of a horn to add to the anarchic silliness. Macbeth and co are bikers, not cyclists, as indicated by the HandleBards’ use of handlebars to signify motorbikes and a child’s toy for the sound of a revving engine.

There is abundant comic energy here, indeed an excess of it, that leaves Macbeth’s text struggling for air by comparison with last May’s visit of Romeo & Juliet that had a better balance between HandleBards’ comic mayhem and teen tragedy.

Imagine Eric Morecambe undermining Ernie Wise’s attempts to present one of those “plays what I wrote”, but then overplaying it as clarinet and shruti box drown out Perkins’s “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” soliloquy. In such a moment, something of the play is lost in choosing to tell it by behaving like Shakespeare’s idiot, full of sound but not fury, signifying what?  

Elsewhere, the comic tone works better, as does the editing out of the dull political stuff down in England. Natalie Simone’s Strictly Come Dancing-loving Lady Macbeth is a scream, blessed with the best comic timing; Jenny Smith has bags of clowning physicality; Perkins’s Macbeth is sacrificed to the constant playfulness.

Dancing queen: Natalie Simone’s Strictly-loving Lady Macbeth

You will enjoy women sending up Macbeth and MacDuff comparing their manliness; the Witches’ percussive musicianship, singing and later rapping; the impatience at MacDuff taking forever to comprehend the news that his wife and bairns are all dead (spoiler alert); the use of red confetti to signify blood; the dagger attached to Macbeth’s head to “see before me”.

Look out too for two Coronavirus references, two well-placed insertions of topical comedy where, elsewhere, Sampson’s cast sometimes pushes too hard for lightweight laughs at the cost of storytelling.

Sampson had decided to not replicate the use of baked beans and tomato soup for blood from the original HandleBards’ Macbeth, preferring the less messy confetti, but there are moments where the production could be cleaner, less prone to over-excitement, less busy.

This Macbeth is neither ‘bloody’ funny, nor dead funny, in a hammy Hammer horror style; more of a Five Go Camp Acting jaunty jape instead.

Coming next will be a tour of Twelfth Night; dates are yet to be announced.

Review by Charles Hutchinson

REVIEW: The HandleBards in Romeo & Juliet, The Love Season, York Theatre Royal, May 25 and 26 ****

Paul Moss: Bringing out the Johnny Vegas in Romeo in The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet. All pictures: Rah Petherbridge

NORMALLY the perma-cycling HandleBards would ride into York as part of a tour de Britain devoted to shaking up Shakespeare.

No sign of an eco-friendly cast pedalling away furiously on the Theatre Royal stage this spring; instead, company founders Paul Moss and Tom Dixon and partner in chaotic irreverence Lucy Green had headed north by train for this one-stop trip into Step 3 Blighty with their “bonkers and unhinged” Romeo & Juliet after 50 dates last year betwixt lockdowns.

They travelled lightly, judging by a set design confined to a clothes rail with rainbow-striped curtaining and bunting to either side. As for props, cycling paraphernalia was to the fore: bells to signify Usain Bolt-fast scene and costume changes; bicycle pumps for killing weaponry and a bike back light for, well, a light, of course.

Pulling faces: Lucy Green as Juliet, teenage tantrums and all, in The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet

If you are thinking by now that The HandleBards must be biting their thumb at the teenage rampage of a Shakespeare tragedy, rather than taking it seriously, you would be right. Moss and Dixon were dressed for a Boy’s Own adventure in shorts and long socks, as if awaiting instruction from Baden-Powell; Green was the one who wore the trousers.

Directed by Nel Crouch, they neither kissed by the book, nor did anything by the book, brazenly removing theatre’s fourth wall in the cause of comedy as Moss announced he would be playing Romeo, a perma-drink-in-the-hand Lady Capulet and a little part of Friar John; Green, Juliet obvs, fiery Tybalt, Lord Montague and the other part of Friar John.

And Dixon? Everyone else, from a bewigged, woefully weak-as-his-letter ‘R’ Duke to a Scouse Mercutio; a Rowlandson round-bottomed Nurse to a perpetually on-the-hoof Friar Lawrence.

Mercutio is usually the witty-tongued loose cannon in R&J; so much so, the story goes, that Shakespeare served him his early P45 for scene-stealing. Here, however, we had the Queen Mab speech and “A plague on both your houses” and otherwise a back seat for Mercutio as the humour was spread all around him.

Romeo (Paul Moss), Juliet (Lucy Green) and pretty much everyone else (Tom Dixon)

Moss’s Romeo, in his back-to-front baseball cap, had the hang-dog air of young Johnny Vegas; Green’s Juliet stamped her foot like the teenager she was supposed to be, yet could suddenly find the beauty of her soliloquies before more giggles and teen awkwardness in her first encounters with Romeo on dancefloor and balcony alike.

Props were characters in their own right, whether the balcony worn by Juliet or the explosions of red ribbons to signify each death. Even Juliet’s sleeping potion tasted “like strawberry” and Romeo’s bottle of poison, “not bad actually”.

Socially distanced audience involvement came in the form of direct address to Chris in the front row, a good sport throughout amid such mischief and merry music-making. For never was a story of less woe than this particular Juliet and her Romeo. It would have been a tragedy to have missed out.

The HandleBards ride roughshod over Romeo & Juliet as tragedy turns to comedy in York Theatre Royal’s Love Season

“Kissing by the book” for pandemic masked ball times in The HandleBards’ unhinged and bonkers re-cycling of Romeo & Juliet for The Love Season at York Theatre Royal

IN the exhortative words of the late Freddie Mercury, “Get on your bikes and ride”.

Eco-friendly, perma-cycling Shakespearean travelling theatre company The HandleBards will be heading to  York Theatre Royal on May 25 and 26.

Directed by Nel Crouch, company founders Paul Moss and Tom Dixon and partner in chaotic irreverence Lucy Green have created an “unhinged and bonkers” version of Romeo & Juliet, the pulp fiction, early Sixties’ girl-group teenage tragedy of the Shakespeare canon.

“Forget the tears and tragedy, and get ready for some live and wired Shakespeare as you’ve never seen it before,” they advise after fashioning a show replete with music, mayhem and a pile-up of costume changes under the influence of cabin fever when cooped up together in lockdown.

“It was pure fortitude that the three of us were living together,” says Paul. “We ended up living in a three-bedroom house in Crystal Palace for the whole of lockdown, and we just opened a bottle of wine and started rehearsing.”

Crouch had adapted Romeo & Juliet originally as an all-female four-hander in 2016 that then toured internationally to Singapore, Malaysia, India and Myanmar in 2017 and 2018, when Lucy slipped into various roles.

“I’d even played Juliet and the Nurse when needed, and Tom had been an emergency understudy too, so we all knew the show really well, and we decided to adapt it as a three-hander for when we could tour outdoors [in a social bubble] last year,” says Paul.

“We rehearsed it in our living room and a rehearsal room, and then we managed to tour it throughout July, August and September, and we ended up doing about 50 shows, so it was pretty extensive. We then started talking to theatres about doing a tour in March and April, but of course that all got cancelled, though we’ve managed to move a lot of the tour dates to September and October.”

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo? Lucy Green’s Juliet giving out distress signals in The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet

The HandleBards have toured York since four fearless friends, Moss, Dixon, Callum Cheatle and Callum Brodie pedalled Twelfth Night to 20 venues in 2013. “In our first days, I drew up a map of beautiful places we could go to, and of course York was on there,” recalls Paul.

“Someone suggested Merchant Adventurers’ Hall [in Fossgate], and we made contact with Lauren Marshall [hall manager and audience development officer]. We didn’t realise there was an outdoor performance space there, but that’s where we played and then camped by the river that night! The shows became so popular that we had to move them inside the hall.”

York missed out on the Romeo & Juliet tour in 2020, but Paul’s past association with Theatre Royal chief executive Tom Bird in their days at Shakespeare’s Globe has brought about next week’s stand-alone performances.

“Tom used to be executive producer at the Globe, and I was among the first Candlelighters in the Sam Wanamaker indoor theatre [where plays are lit by candlelight]. Tom and I have kept in touch to help each other out, and when he was interested in putting on shows outdoors at the Theatre Royal, we spoke, but instead we’re now doing the Love Season indoors.”

Usually, The HandleBards travel by cycle on their tours. “But for Romeo & Juliet, we’ve toured by van with a stage for socially distanced performances, and we’ll be taking the train to York,” says Paul.

Looking ahead, he adds: “For our upcoming all-female, comical Macbeth tour, our stage will now fit into an electric van, to go with the cycles, to give us carbon neutrality. If the show doesn’t make it to York this summer, it definitely will next year.

“Lucy, meanwhile, is going into rehearsals for Nel Crouch’s new version of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance Of Being Earnest: not Shakespeare and probably not cycling, for my new company, Slapstick Picnic, where basically the company premises will be wherever I have my laptop! Only two actors will be doing the entire show: Lucy and Bill Ross-Fawcett.”

Should anyone be a newcomer to The HandleBards, what should they expect from Romeo & Juliet? “Unbridled joy!” says Paul. “There are so many parts to our shows, always changing costumes, playing different roles, always having a good time. Romeo & Juliet may be one of the world’s great tragedies, but we’re here to entertain, so if there are tears, they will be tears of joy.

Wherefore art I? Cast thine eye hither, O Juliet. Paul Moss’s Romeo pulls a face of exasperation in The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet

“Shakespeare’s plays are there to entertain and we’re just here to tell good stories. The interesting thing about Shakespeare’s tragedies is that there’s so much humour and comedy in them! 

“Until Mercutio bites the dust, there’s very little tragedy in it. It’s a comedy till then, and people forget that, trying to make it so dark. You can play it that way, but it’s a family comedy in the first half. Even if the plays are tragedies, we approach them first with the aim of finding the comedy within the tragedy.

“There’s very little violence in Romeo & Juliet until it’s self-inflicted, so it’s all revolving around a ‘thumb bite’ up to that point!”

Reflecting on the spoke in the wheel of Lockdown x 3, applied to both The HandleBards and theatre, Paul says: “We’ve been some of the luckiest people in our industry, being able to tour last year and getting back up on our feet so quickly this spring.

“The Arts Council has been so supportive to theatres, but when things start opening up again and the furloughs drop out, I think we’ll see holes where people who are freelance haven’t been able to survive . I fear there’ll be a definite impact on theatre over the next two years.”

The Love Season presents The HandleBards’ Romeo & Juliet, York Theatre Royal, May 25, 8pm; May 26, 3pm and 8pm. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk. YTR is complying with government and industry Covid-19, social-distancing guidelines to ensure safety of staff and audiences.

Riding ruff-shod: The HandleBards’ Paul Moss, left, Lucy Green and Tom Dixon transforming Shakespeare’s tragic teen romance into a chaotic comedy under the influence of lockdown cabin fever

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