Jatinder Singh Randhawa relishes modern twist to Macbeth’s revival

The William Shakespeare play was staged at the Donmar Warehouse earlier this year, before it was transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre for a limited run until December 14.

• Sarwar Alam
• 17 October, 2024

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By: Sarwar Alam

GOING up against acting heavyweights David Tenant and Cush Jumbo in Macbeth was like learning a profession firsthand from the “finest of craftspeople”, Jatinder Singh Randhawa told Eastern Eye.

The William Shakespeare play was staged at the Donmar Warehouse earlier this year, before it was transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre for a limited run until December 14.

Tennant reprises his role as the general-turned-murderous king, while Jumbo portrays Lady Macbeth. Randhawa plays the role of The Porter/Seytan.

“I’m very fortunate that most of my interactions as Seytan are with David Tenant and Cush Jumbo,” said Randhawa. “During rehearsals it would just be a room of the three of us and I would sit up in the balcony and watch them two work. You just can’t help but be inspired to watch such two well-respected performers work out the scene and do it in a way that’s truthful to them and their character.

“I remember they had an hour to figure out a scene, but they did it in 20 minutes. You don’t pay a craftsman on how long it would take them to work on their craft, you pay them for the experience they’ve had on working on their craft and they (Tenant and Jumbo) have huge experience. They know what they’re doing and you learn so much from their dedication to their work and how effective you can be within that work.”

Macbeth’s production team is led by director Max Webster, a multi-Olivier award winner and who previously directed the play adaptation of Life Of Pi as well as other Shakespeare plays including Henry V with Kit Harington, As You Like It, Much Ado About Nothing and Twelfth Night.

Randhawa said working with Webster gave him the confidence to figure out the role of The Porter/ Seytan.

The Porter is the gatekeeper to the Macbeth’s castle, and jokes about being the keeper to ‘the gates of hell’. His character is a heavy drinker and provides important comic relief amid the play’s intense tragic momentum. Seyton is Macbeth’s chief servant who offers a glimpse into the inner workings of the tragic hero’s mind. He helps to arm Macbeth and reports the Queen’ s death to him.

“Traditionally, The Porter and Seytan are two different characters, but in our show, we’ve combined them,” said Randhawa.

For The Porter role, Randhawa has direct interactions with the audience, coming up with off-the-cuff lines to bring comedic relief to the serious scenes.

“I was able to step in and out of the Shakespeare – I have contemporary lines that are married to a Shakespearean line,” he said. “One of the biggest compliments I had last year was someone coming up to me saying, ‘we actually needed that scene because everything was so intense, and that character comes in at the right time’.

“The Porter scenes are so out-of-pocket, but people have told me it’s still so in-tune with the show because there’s always a danger of people going ‘why was that there?’.”

Though Randhawa comes across as naturally funny with his deep Scottish accent and sharp one-liners, he reveals that he found it a real challenge preparing for the role.

“I don’t have a standup background – I’m just a guy,” he laughed. “It was incredibly difficult, because essentially you have to be funny. It’s kind of hard to point at someone and tell them a funny joke – you don’t know who’s going to be there and what’s going to be funny for audience.

“The challenge for me was to figure out what I can and can’t say, and how does it make sense at the time of the play. I went to a lot of comedy  nights to see how those guys chat to the audience and how they pick people to interact with.”

He added: “I’m Glaswegian, so I imagined my The Por ter/Seytan as that random guy in the pub who everyone  knows because he goes up to every random person and talks about everything and anything.”

The Porter has a monologue intended to be a break from the harrowing scenes of Macbeth. In earlier adaptations, it was used during the intermission.

Randhawa said that monologue took time to figure out due to the Shakespearean English and finding a way make it relevant to a contemporary audience.

“We knew that language was going to be difficult, not just in terms of getting the audience to understand what the character’s saying, but also feel what they’re going through at the time,” said Randhawa.

“But with Shakespeare, you’ve got a rhythm, you got beats – words that don’t need to be used in the normal English language today. The Porter monologue in Shakespearean time would have been funny. If I said that today, no one will laugh at it – it’s not funny.

“The challenge was how do we make this funny? We contemporised it and then added Shakespeare. I would say my contemporary line, where I get people laughing, then I continue interacting with the audience member with my Shakespeare line, and then we move on.”

Written over 400 years ago, Macbeth is one of the most popular plays to have ever been performed in the theatre. In the UK alone, there will be over a dozen different performances this year.

This version of Macbeth uses groundbreaking sound design and live Celtic folk music (all played through lightweight headphones provided), leaving the audience immersed in every whisper, cry and thought. The use of binaural audio soundscapes propels the audience into 11th century Scotland, and deeper into Macbeth’s downfall than ever before.

Randhawa’s character as The Porter even mentions the sound element of the show when he breaks the fourth wall and quips, “you’ve all paid to listen to a radio play”. “Our microphones, instead of being hooked up to big surround sound and projecting our voices, it’s hooked up to everyone’s headphones and so our voices exist within this soundscape,” he said.

“What we want to portray is the mental health journey of a soldier returning from war and suffering from PTSD and putting the audience into that perspective, having rumblings in your head, for example, or voices or certain things that can cause a triggering moment. It gives audiences an insight and what’s going on inside Macbeth and Lady Macbeth’s head.

“The soundscape is continuous throughout the play. There are sounds related to moments of intensity. You have other moments such as when Banquo has a speech about swallows nesting, and you hear swallows.

“You get to really experience the total show. Some people might find it daunting, but I think it adds a massive element to theatre performance.”

As a Scot, Randhawa admitted it’s extra special for him to be part of Macbeth – a play about the downfall of a Scottish general. It’s also not lost on him the significance of a south Asian actor having a prominent role in a Shakespearean play.

“For me to get cast in this role, being south Asian, it was a huge privilege and an important milestone,” he said.

“But there is a lot of pressure as well because people will be looking at us thinking ‘can you guys do it?’ This is what we’ve been calling for, better representation and while there has been gradual progression the past, recently there has been a real explosion.”

Randhawa said he hoped greater representation of south Asian actors and stories will gradually filter through to Scotland as well.

“There’s quite a few of us up here (south Asian actors) and we look down south, and we see something like The Father and the Assassin on at the National Theatre and I don’t think we’d get something like that in Scotland. That’s the change that we want to see.”

 Macbeth is on at the Harold Pinter Theatre until December 14