The Border Project is theatre on the edge. Teetering between comic farce and true allegiance to Shakespeare’s tragedy of political ambition, The Sydney Theatre Company and The Border Project’s Vs Macbeth is an irreverent, risk-taking, energy-charged and highly entertaining experiment in ironic deconstruction of Shakespeare’s original text..

“Prepare to play Chinese Whispers” greets the audience on the video screen as they enter the theatre, where, on a dimly-lit open space stage, three dark figures in modern dress play out a subtle ritual of provocation, exhorting an audience to enter the murky world of superstition and supernatural phenomena. “This play is cursed. Pass it on.” From lip to ear, the sinister comment whispers its way through the audience, soon to be followed by another, “In London there was a fire that burned the theatre down.”

The scene is set for impending doom, inspired by Macbeth’s litany of disaster that has beset production of this work throughout the centuries. During the performance, catastrophes in Mexico and Amsterdam highlight the dangers that any producers of “the Scottish Play” may confront. Inspired by legendary tales of earlier disasters, and encouraged by the blunders encountered during rehearsals, director, Sam Haren and his youthful and physically agile ensemble construct a carefully timed and deliberately placed sequence of comical mishaps to entertain a contemporary audience, unaccustomed to Shakespeare’s verse and far removed from the political intrigues of Scottish and English rivalry of the 16th century.

Therein rests the dilemma that this talented company must confront. The deliberate departure from a faithful production of Shakspeare’s most straight-forward and simple plot, and the intentional interruption with blundering sight gags, slapstick, stumbles, botched entrances, dangerous accidents and unintended gaffes runs the risk of trivializtion of the play’s tragic consequence of the noble hero’s fatal flaw.

I remain ambivalent. After all, it is not the first time that tragedy has been lampooned or reduced to comical farce.

It is a credit to Sam Haren’s direction that he is able to inject such absurdity, whilst retaining the essential truth of the text, and Shakespeare’s commentary on the pernicious consequence of dark and bloody ambition that “o’erleaps itself and fall on t’other”.

The production’s comic mishaps, played with the power of surprise, provide moments of Brechtian alienation – an opportunity to reflect on malevolent motive, corrupt ambition, destiny’s predetermination and the nature of allegiance. Haren and his ensemble carefully construct their deconstructed intent. Betwixt and between the comical interludes, there are glimpses of tragic reality in the performances of actors, who display an intelligent grasp of the text and character, before lapsing cheekily into yet another moment of absurd mishap.

Cameron Goodall’s Macbeth is a gyrating bolt of grotesque absurdity, possessed by a seething insanity and obsessed by the driving mania of fearful ambition. His eventual descent into paranoia, captured with haunting effect in a chilling soliloquy close-up on the video screen, accompanied by the mocking, disembodied voices of the witches, redeems the essential tragedy of Macbeth’s fall from grace.

Amber McMahon’s Lady Macbeth is most damaged by Haren’s removal of her opportunity to consistently chart her journey into madness. Her sleepwalking scene, delivered with an exit sign, cradled in her arms, though symbolically intriguing, deprived her of the opportunity to lend her guilt-laden, remorseful insanity full blood. It is a performance of potential power, plucked from its promise by the dulled impact of comical intervention.

Glimmerings of what might have been in a more traditional performance of the play are effectively captured in the more stirring portrayals of Brett Stiller’s Banquo, Takhi Saul’s Macduff and Zindzi Okenyo’s Lady Macduff. Okenyo’s grief-stricken response to her children’s murder before her own exploding paintball assassination chokes the throat in this production’s rarer moment of empathy. Where Haren does leave an entire scene unimpeded, in the case of Macduff’s test of allegiance by Malcolm, played with effect by Richard Pyros, his production tends to become weighed down with words, a theatrical lamb led to slaughter upon the altar of fractured convention.

In front of me, a young woman laughs at each calamitous interruption to the tale. As lighting bars fall, steel rostra on casters collide, costumes malfunction and the production descends into a morass of mishap, she continues to laugh.

Those familiar with the text may applaud the clumsy chance that turns coincidence to comedy and Fate to human folly, but The Border Project does not give Shakespeare’s play “full sway and masterdom”.

Audiences will enjoy an ingeniously devised night of professional entertainment, while purists purse their lips and Shakespeare’s shuddering epitaph calls from the grave, “Cursed be he who moves my bones.”

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