The Weyard Sisters Review

The Weyard Sisters is described as a ‘darkly funny’ sequel to Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The play centres around three women, who we are to assume are the three witches from the original text. Erlynn, the housekeeper; Marlin, her changeling sister and their alcoholic sister-in-law, Portia. The play is said to focus on the motivations, misunderstandings, and persecution of female servants accused of witchcraft told through bardic verse.

In the theatre world, it is thought very bad luck to say the actual title of The Bard’s classic play and so superstition states that we must refer to it as ‘The Scottish Play’. I have to wonder if this had anything to do with the confused and bewildering piece of theatre I was invited to see last night.

Helen Alexander’s script though historically accurate, was extremely convoluted and lacked any real direction. As a Shakespeare enthusiast myself I was excited to see how the play would ‘highlight some of the unresolved questions from the original text’ but I found myself leaving with many more I’m afraid. The text itself started off strong and felt very Shakespearean-esque but as the play went on it began to feel very rushed and weirdly modern.

Dana Pinto’s set consisted of a few pieces of furniture, three pillars, and a white sheet draped to cover the back of the stage. It was unclear as to whether this backstage area was part of the stage or not as it was used at some points to create shadows of the witches but then seemed irrelevant the rest of the time. When it wasn’t being used you could see cast members wandering about and set being moved, which all felt very amateur. Alexander needed to make a clear choice about how this area was to be used as it was incredibly confusing as an audience.

The pace throughout the whole play was completely wrong and this was mainly due to the scene changes. Not only did they include some very odd song choices (switching from music fitting of the era one minute to contemporary rock the next was very jarring) but they were horrendously sloppy. At one point two of the actors did a little jig to try and get past each other, both while holding pieces of set -the whole thing was very distracting.

The themes that are described in the write-up of the production were very unclear throughout the whole piece. The idea that the three women were fighting a world of misogyny didn't read fully and in all honestly I'm still not sure if they were meant to be actual witches or not. There was also a jump forward in time at the end of the play to the present day, which was extremely confusing. It seemed to come completely out of nowhere and we were given little to no context as to what was going on.

I also unfortunately saw a performance where cast members forgot their lines while holding scripts and there were a few missed tech cues so this could also have impacted my experience of the play. Standout cast members however included Ciaran Corsar as Gordon who demonstrated brilliant comic timing throughout and Claire Morrissey who gave a very grounded and engaging performance as Agatha Atheling.

What could have been a brilliant concept and an interesting idea ended up feeling more like an A-level drama piece. It needed clearer direction and an idea of exactly what it was trying to be. Sadly not the sequel I was hoping to see.

The Weyard Sisters is currently playing at Riverside Studios until 22 September.