Perth Festival: valour of Noongar tongue an asset in retelling of Macbeth

There’s a heroic quality to Hecate, the Noongar-language version of Macbeth that has opened Iain Grandage’s all-indigenous first week of the Perth Festival.

A scene from Hecate staged at the Perth Festival. Picture: Dana Weeks

There’s a heroic quality to Hecate, the Noongar-language version of Macbeth that has opened Iain Grandage’s all-indigenous first week of the Perth Festival.

It lies in the incredible ambition — so big it raises anxiety in even the most supportive viewer — to return an indigenous nation’s language to centre stage in the cultural life of a state.

To perform this nimble, entrancing adaptation by Kylie Bracknell of Shakespeare’s tragedy, she first had to restore to her nine actors their birthright, the southwest Noongar language that their own relatives were once removed from or forbidden to speak.

Knowing this, it is impossible to watch Cezera Critti-Schnaars, Bobbi Henry, Della Rae Morrison, Kyle Morrison, Mark Nannup, Trevor Ryan, Maitland Schnaars, Ian Wilkes and Reuben Yorkshire without being astonished.

Della Rae Morrison and cast members in Hecate, Perth Festival. Picture: Dana Weeks.

Their fluent utterances combine with a lively physicality that lead us straight to the heart of the matter, the bloody ambition of Macbeth (Schnaars) as he seeks power at any cost.

Despite no English subtitles, the audience can relax. We easily recognise the unfolding story — a thrilled Lady Macbeth reading a letter about her soldier husband’s fame, his murderous capture of King Duncan’s crown, the madness he fears when the ghost of another victim, Banquo, appears before him.

Only once does a character break into English to signal “Macbeth doth come”. His companion looks uncomprehending until the line is delivered in Noongar.

The action is embellished by the cast chanting Noongar songs, researched and gorgeously arranged by indigenous musicologist Clint Bracknell. Zoe Atkinson’s strikingly sparse set hints at a camp fire and sacred rockhole on a granite outcrop.

When Macduff and his plotters move in on Macbeth, disguised with tree branches, you can almost smell the eucalypt. Macbeth’s grisly end is masterfully choreographed, as shocking as Banquo’s ghoulish exit from a waterhole.

But this Macbeth inventively shifts the play’s focus from a king doomed by his own murderous greed to the larger cosmic impact of human deeds on Noongar Boodjar, the land.

Bracknell elevates the role of Hecate, a traditionally minor role as Queen of the Witches, to one of an all-seeing female sage who knows her land is sick and sets out to restore order.

The striking black-tunic figure of Hecate (Della Rae Morrison) stands firmly in the face of male hubris, a wise matriarch spreading healing magic where she can.

Hecate is a twin achievement. It honours both Shakespeare’s famous tragedy and the triumph of a much older culture asserting its right to be heard — and spoken.

Hecate. Yirra Yaakin Theatre Company. Perth Festival, in association with Bell Shakespeare. Subiaco Arts Centre, February 8. Tickets: $25-$69. Bookings: online. Duration: 90 mins, no interval. Until February 16.