Wyrd Sisters

From Nottingham Culture: Wyrd Sisters Review

Sir Terence David John "Terry" Pratchett OBE is arguably one of this century’s best fantasy writers. His forty-plus series of books on Discworld has won a variety of awards and the sixth in the series, Wyrd Sisters, has been adapted for stage and film.
The most recent version of Wyrd Sisters performed at the Lace Market Theatre was an interesting smash up of steampunk and Discworld. Steampunk, a genre using technology in Victorian times to bring about outrageous story lines, mixes well with Pratchett’s Discworld. The staging included bizarre televisions set up at the back, flickering images throughout the performance, as well as pictures of gears and such on the floor and sides. Many of the costumes, too, included things like goggles and guards with altered and odd masks. While they didn’t perhaps make as much use of these things as they could have (sound effects, etc.), it was still an interesting adaptation.
The story of the Wyrd Sisters is, in true Pratchett style, funny and strange. Three witches, played by Kareena Sims, Emma Carlton and Hannah Massingham, are heavily involved in their town’s politics. When someone brings them the king’s child for safekeeping, they send it off with a group of actors, figuring fate will bring the child back when the time is right. But the town becomes angry with the Duke (who has killed the king and in Lady Macbeth style can’t stop trying to scrub the blood from his hands) and decide they can’t wait for the child to grow up. So the witches move time and space, and freeze the town for fifteen years. Once the child comes back, he decides he has no intention of being king. And so the king’s bastard child is crowned instead, and eventually marries the more innocent of the three witches.
Kareena Sims, as Granny Weatherwax, does an excellent job portraying the head witch with her wits about her. She’s the epitome of the steampunk heroine and delivers her lines clearly and believably. Emma Carlton playing Nanny Ogg provides definite levity with her intense cockney accent and double entendres, and Hannah Massingham, playing Magrat Garlick, does a good job of portraying the innocent and silly youngest witch. Valentine Atrix, playing the Duke of Lancre, uses a thick German accent, and drew plenty of laughs with his constant hand scrubbing, though he was occasionally difficult to understand because he spoke so fast. Likewise, his counterpart Kay Haw, playing the role of the Duchess of Lancre, often spoke very quickly and so some of her lines were lost, though she was completely believable as the evil and sadistic Duchess. Ciaran Stones, playing the Fool and bastard son of the king, did an admirable job playing the foil and love interest of Magrat.
This is a fun, silly play, with a good adaptation put on by the cast of the Lace Market Theatre.