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Insights

Theatre Review: Macbeth: dir. Max Webster, Harold Pinter Theatre

Izzi is a Master’s student on the Shakespeare Studies MA at King’s and the Globe Theatre, having completed her undergraduate degree in Classics and English at the University of Oxford. As her MA suggests, she loves all things Shakespeare and early modern drama, and she regularly watches and reviews modern productions of Shakespeare plays. Although you wouldn’t know it from how much she loved Much Ado, Izzi’s research focuses on bodily violence on the early modern stage.

Izzi has written the below review for the most recent production of Macbeth (2022/3): dir. Max Webster, Harold Pinter Theatre; also filmed (film dir. Tim Van Someren) for streaming in cinemas.

Verdict: 4 Stars

This production began its life in the Donmar Warehouse before transferring to the Harold Pinter Theatre for a very limited run. Since I couldn’t quite bring myself to part with one of my kidneys to fund a ticket for a live performance I watched the streamed version from the comfort of the Odeon Cinema. Audiences at the live performances experienced Gareth Fry’s intricate sound design through binaural headsets, lending the production a certain intense intimacy; the surround sound of the cinema setting allowed for a similar intensity (or so I’m telling myself!) by having voices and noises emanate from all around the room, creating an unsettling atmosphere and mirroring that of the Macbeths’ Scottish castle.

This focus on sound-scaping perhaps informed director Max Webster’s choice to have the Weird Sisters present in voice only, conspiratorially whispering their potion recipes and bewitching prophecies. Eleanor Rhode made a similar decision in her recent production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream for the RSC, relegating Titania’s fairies to twinkly lights and twee disembodied voices: I found the fairies’ absence to be a real drawback in that play, but for the darkly psychological tone of Webster’s production it worked perfectly, making the relationship between Macbeth and the Weird Sisters almost schizophrenic.

David Tennant’s performance as Macbeth is a thing of beauty. A seasoned actor of Shakespeare’s troubled heroes with an impressive CV including performances of Richard II and Hamlet, his Macbeth resists the temptation to be too mad too early, instead retaining a threatening superciliousness throughout the play. His charisma with Cush Jumbo’s cold and calculated Lady Macbeth is palpable, particularly when they discuss their murderous plans in hushed tones as the ill-fated Duncan dines mere metres away from them.

Two tiny factors prevent this production from a five-star review. Firstly, while Jatinder Singh Randhawa delivers a good performance of the Porter’s speech in its own right, his comic audience participation with the house lights up felt like too large a disruption to the production’s otherwise tightly controlled and oppressive atmosphere. Secondly, Cush Jumbo’s Lady Macbeth wears bright white in stark contrast to the blacks and browns worn by all other characters; however, when Jumbo doubles as a minor role, no change is made to her distinctive costume, creating some confusion among the audience (as I gleaned from overhearing post-show chatter) as to why Lady Macbeth was acting so differently in one scene. A simple dark cloak would have allowed Lady Macbeth’s white outfit to retain its significance.

Overall, though, Max Webster’s Macbeth is incisive and powerful, with a particularly captivating performance from Tennant. The stripped-back and sleek monochrome visuals contrasted with the complex and intricate sound design make for a poignant and chilling watch.

By Izzi Strevens

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Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Leaving Home: An Undergraduate Experience

Lily is an undergraduate student in English at King’s. She is particularly interested in prose literature that explores new beginnings. Through this work, she hopes to capture the universal experience of leaving home and the uncertainty that this can bring. 

When I first moved to London, I got a haircut. One of those ones with a name. That way, I would be the person with the ‘this-named-haircut’. I liked my hair because I looked familiar, like an image I’d seen before, reminded in the moment of the exact place and the exact time. Before, I looked too much like myself. This time, I could walk down the street and know, even for a short while, exactly who I was.

As the nights get longer and the mornings get shorter, I feel less of the day is my own. Today, I will leave behind the comforting monotony of my desk to get a coffee. I’ll go to one of those coffee chains with the bright lights and the over-enthusiastic staff. They will act like they haven’t just worked a six hour shift that mostly consisted of cleaning up other people’s used mugs. Somewhere I am familiar with, for fear of getting it wrong. Sometimes I think that everyone received a book on how to live their lives when they were younger and that mine got lost in the post. Sometimes I wish I could be old, 80 or something, and to have lived my life. To look back with regret at a life misspent but to know I don’t have to go through the agony of living it again. It’s raining and I don’t have a raincoat with me here. Isn’t it strange how the rain falls more slowly in the streetlight? Like it doesn’t wish to fall any further. It’s done it once and now it must do it again and again, for the rest of time.

I grew up in a place where there are no streetlights. There just aren’t enough people to justify the expense. I would like to know if there is a definitive number of people to justify the construction of a streetlight in an area. Sometimes I like to imagine there’s a man in a suit somewhere counting the residents of a town miles away from the comforting heat of his city office – comparing it to the calculated cost of installing a streetlight. He’ll use a physical calculator that he keeps in the top drawer of his desk and he’ll write the sums out on a little notepad that’s seen better days before typing the sums into a computer. Later, he will submit his findings to be reviewed by someone who has been there longer than he has. His spreadsheet will conclude that 199 is too few people to justify the expense but that 200 is just right, like some inhuman corporate game of Goldilocks. When I was at home, I would go out and hate the thought of seeing someone I knew. When I go out now, I know I never will. There will be nobody within the whole five minute journey that I will recognise. There will be nobody, in fact, that I will ever see again. They will go on living their lives just as I will go on living mine, and they won’t remember the brief window in which our lives crossed. Perhaps they will cross again some five years later – in a different place, a different time. Neither of us will notice or remember our first encounter.

I think that that’s the most important thing – not where I go, what will happen or even what I do – it’s what I remember. What I notice. What to do with a lifetime? What do I choose to take note of, to carry with me for the rest of my life? If it’s not this face, it will be this one. If it’s not this book, it will be that one. If it’s not this memory, then, perhaps, that one.

Sometimes I think that I miss the memories of home more than the place itself. I miss the long summer mornings at liberal churches in the country when I was a child. I miss the days that felt like they would last a lifetime and, in a way, they always will. They will be the place I am constantly returning to, as if I never left. At home, people always say see you later, never goodbye. I miss waking up in a town where the buses never come and the sun stretches on like the yawn of a cat in the mid-morning sun. I miss the space underneath my bed that’s full to the brim with all of the stuff I’ve collected over the years, boxes bursting out, full of old memories and opportunities to create new ones. In my new room there is so much empty space. The opportunity to fill a space, to create a life from nothing.

When people back home ask how London is, I will always mention how it’s so busy and there are so many people. What I really want to say is that I hate how you feel like you’re never alone. I hate how there are hundreds of little supermarkets with nothing in them. I hate how I have to walk ten minutes in the rain to get a bus that will take me to not quite where I want to be. Most of all, I hate how when I look to the sky at night, I see absolutely nothing. Now my hair has grown out, I look in the mirror and I’m faced with the person I least wished to see.

By Lily

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Insights

The Power of a Narrative: The Menendez Brothers

Gurleen is a first year English student at Kings College London. Alongside academic work, she is passionate about the arts, including painting, playing the piano, reading, and video editing. She also enjoys playwriting and as of 2023, was listed as a nationally ranked playwright for the National Theatre. She is also dedicated to animal welfare and has recently rescued and adopted a stray kitten. Due to her interest in the legal system and criminal justice, she is also considering pursuing a career in law following her English degree.

The Power of a Narrative: The Menendez Brothers

True crime is a billion-dollar industry, from TV shows, podcasts and books. The darkest and most horrifying stories seem to compel and captivate public consciousness, from following along the narrative like a real-life mystery, to understanding why someone chose to commit the crimes they did. However, over the decades, as well as an increased interest in true crime, there has also simultaneously been an increase in the change of public perception of what constitutes as justice, consequently unravelling important social issues and resulting in social movements.

One of the most recent and largest calls from criminal justice which some of you may be familiar with, is that of The Menendez Brothers. Lyle and Erik Menendez are two brothers who, on the night of August 20th 1989, shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, to death in their Beverley Hills house and have been incarcerated since 1990. However, in recent years, there has been a growing social movement to free the brothers. Although their case is a well-known American true crime story, its impact has reached far beyond the United States, where increasingly growing numbers of people across the globe are learning about their story in an effort to recognise the truth. This blog post explores how Lyle and Erik’s story and case has been misrepresented in certain aspects of the media and the inconsistencies presented within the criminal justice system.

Back to the 90s

At the time of the murders, Joseph Lyle Menendez and Erik Galen Menendez were 21 and 18 respectively. They maintained the story that the murders were a mob hit, possibly by the mafia until their eventual arrest in March 1990. The media spun the narrative that both Lyle and Erik were ‘spoiled greedy rich kids’ until their trial in 1993 which uncovered a far different version of the truth than what was currently being portrayed. Both brothers proclaimed that they had suffered physical, emotional and psychological abuse at the hands of their parents for the entirety of their lives, as well as sexual abuse, Lyle from the ages of six to eight, and Erik, from the ages of six to a few weeks before the killings. The brothers were very reluctant to give up this information due to their embarrassment and to not wanting to tarnish their family name, as well as the stigma surrounding sexual abuse, both brothers feeling their story would not be believed.

On the days leading up to the murder and in the moments before, ominous threats and extreme tension lead to the brothers believing they were going to be killed by the parents, resulting in them acting first and killing them in self-defence.

In the first trial however, the prosecution instead claimed the boys killed to inherit their parents’ $14 million fortune. The trial ended in a hung jury where the jurors were unable to unanimously agree on a decision, which subsequently resulted in a much more restricted and bias second trial, where a limited amount of the vast evidence of sexual abuse the boys suffered, was allowed to be admitted, resulting in Lyle and Erik being convicted of first-degree murder in 1996, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Since then, Lyle and Erik have continued to state that they killed in self-defence and have been described as ‘model prisoners’, working to rehabilitate themselves, as well as being an asset to the prison community they live in.

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Life writing, Creative writing and Performance

Portfolio of Poetry – Sìana L. Baker

Sìana Baker is a second year undergraduate English student at King’s College. She enjoys twentieth-century poetry, philosophy, literary theory and modern film.

I have been writing poetry, quite literally, since I learned what it was. I’ve actually been writing stories since before I could write – I used to love the Simpsons, so I would draw pictures accompanied by horizontal lines of broken zig-zags (like in the newspapers in the cartoon) and rehearse ‘reading’ the story for my reception class. My writing has always been everywhere: any English schoolwork was hung on my bedroom wall and on the walls at school and my diary, no matter where it was or at what age, always had poetry in it.

But I am not a prodigy. I wasn’t writing symphonies at seven or solving the fifth postulate, I was born in Lincolnshire trying to deal with my mother. My poetry was never that good and still isn’t where I would like it to be, but I am slowly learning.

Of all the pressures in my life, I never want poetry to be one. I want to be effortlessly good at it: I want to write poetry like I walk to school, like I tell the right person I love them or like I get over a cold; because I want to, because it is good for me and because I would be half the person without it. Pressure does not make me a diamond, it makes me a wreck. Hence, all my poetry is written in one go, in twenty minutes and never edited. I like leaving the trance behind and going about my day, or to bed; I like having something to look back on in a few months when my writing is better and being able to love what is bad and good about it.

I am raw and messy person. I can quite confidently say that it is my favourite thing about myself; I love not caring (if it’s ethical) and the comfort that gives other people to want to be themselves, or in reassuring them that things really don’t matter as much as people might suggest. I am shamelessly ragged and I like my poetry to be the same way, for myself and for the people that might see it on my social media, because I hate the idea that everything in art, and everything in social media, has to be curated as a masterpiece. I am not a masterpiece and neither is my writing and we both love ourselves endlessly for that.

I hope you enjoy!

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Contemporary Insights

Literature meets ‘Magik’, A research into Occultism and trying to understand the genre.

I would like to dedicate this post to my uncle Karl Stone, thank you for being my inspiration and sparking my interests towards this wonderful, inquisitive genre. There are a million questions I wish I could ask you about your work, but these will have to wait. Until then, I hope you have found the answers to the questions you were looking for to do with this weird and wonderful genre and we hope to make you proud with a complete ninth book.

Occultism is defined by the Oxford University Press as ‘supernatural, mystical or magical beliefs, practices or phenomena.’ The word comes from the Latin Occultare meaning ‘secrete’.

With reference to the definition above, this genre of literature is no short of a secret. It isn’t everyday you hear of people reading a book belonging to the genre of Occultism, which is often viewed as a sub-category to the supernatural or fantasy categories. For context, my uncle was an author who wrote under the penname ‘Karl Stone’. During his career, he published 8 books, with his most popular titled ‘The Moonchild of Yesod: A Grimoire of Occult Hyperchemistry, or Typhonian Sex Magick’, which was published in 2012 with only 418 copies available to purchase. Stone numbered each of the 418 copies and signed them to create authenticity and ensure that those who purchased the book would receive original copies, not duplicated ones. I was 6 years old at the time the book was published, and widely unaware of the literary mind field that Occultism was and that my uncle was a cornerstone of its writing. I always knew that whatever it was, he had a passion for it, and he was good at it.

Sadly in 2019, he passed away leaving one incomplete book. By this point I was 14 and left with more questions than ever surrounding the genre of his writing. As my passion for literature grew, I longed more than ever to be able to speak to him about his works. The questions I wanted to ask him were ones I could no longer ask, and I made it my goal to take matters into my own hands and research this mysterious, hidden part of literature – drawing light on a subject he dedicated his career to. Now that I am at KCL, it only feels right that granted the opportunity to write about something, I choose to write about him, honouring his legacy and shining light on a genre which shifts the perspective of the world into one that leaves you questioning everything from the moment you engage with it.

I am choosing to focus on The Moonchild of Yesod described as ‘a grimoire of Occult Hyper chemistry… for the use of the practicing Occultist and Hyper chemists.’[1]. My first point of call when I began my research was to find out what a ‘hyper chemist’ was and the sort of things they practice. However, I was left disappointed when I did not get a clear answer from Google. ‘What is the job of a hyper chemist?’ provided no insight into the type I figured my uncle would write about, as it was obvious that this was not just a reference to a regular pharmaceutical chemistry. Stone was viewed as a ‘hyper chemist of the Trans-Himalayan system’ to his audience who compared him to other renowned authors in the filed such as Madame Blavatsyky, a Russian American mystic; Aleister Crowley, an English Occultist and Kenneth Grant, an English ceremonial magician who was an advocate of the Thelematic religion.

The religion of ‘Thelema’ was ‘a pre-Christian witchcraft religion’[2] which I assumed would have influenced my uncle to incorporate the theme of witchcraft and religion if Grant was his muse. As I began de-constructing the title, ‘Yesod’ is found in Jewish Philosophy. It comes from a node found in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life and referencing the base. The symbol of ‘Yesod’ can be found incorporated in Stone’s book where he makes references to it, for example, “The yesodic sphere is the landscape of illusion and glamour, it is the play of Lila, the world of appearances (sattwa, essence, kalas, substance or tincture) which composes the structure of the four qabalistic worlds.”[3], “To the qabalist, the Tree of Life is a living dynamic metaphysical template which indicates the relationship between God (YHVH) and Man (Adam Kadmon).”[4]. Spiritually, it is connected to the moon and unlocks a realm of spirituality and the subconscious, hence the title ‘The Moonchild’. I personally imagine he chose this title because the Moonchild in question is awakening into this world of spirituality. This could perhaps reflect on how my uncle felt when he first delved into the realm of occultism, as a new child within this obscure literary genre. It would have been interesting to know his reasoning for the title and whether this interpretation is correct. However, based on how invested he used to be in his work, perhaps it is.

The community surrounding Occultism is relatively small, and it is not easy to find one that you can become part of. Overall, the genre lacks exposure to the public due to the nature of articulate knowledge needed and the extent of research one must conduct. Those who delve into Occultism normally have a background or interest in witchcraft, supernatural beliefs, conspiracies, religion or herbal medicinal practices. Existing communities tend to stay hidden as most members practice Occultism as a lifestyle or profession. Occultism is all about gaining an awareness of a world that goes beyond human life form and accepting that there are other entities and  supernatural elements combined with scientific elements, which people find difficult to commit to.

As for the reviews, The Moonchild of Yesod is rated a 4.55 on Goodreads, with majority of readers having a deep understanding of the genre itself. A review posted on the 30th of December wrote “This is a scholarly work that I recommend for intermediate to advanced students”[5]. Jordan Fitzgerald also went on to say, “Karl Stone will be known as one of the trailblazers of the occult avant-garde of this century.”[6]. To see such positive appraisal for my uncle was something that made me quite emotional and part of me hopes that he was able to read these reviews and be made aware of the impact his writing had on the Occultist community.

One user, named ‘C’, rated the book 2 stars, saying how he was ‘Trying to be Kenneth Grant’.[7] However, I think with a genre such as this one, it is difficult to try and impersonate a previous author because of the nature of the research and compilation that goes into producing a book like The Moonchild of Yesod. Rather than a case of ‘trying to be’, Stone wanted to show how Grant’s work inspired him, and other critiques have said to use Grant’s work as a starting point to educate as a ‘beginners guide’ to understanding The Moonchild.

From this experience, I know my research into Occultism is yet to finish as it has only just begun. As my relationship with literature continues to grow throughout my degree, my research will hopefully broaden, and I will develop a greater and in-depth understanding of the books Karl Stone has written and the ones that lay beyond. I highly encourage anyone reading to research the genre for yourself and form your own opinion towards it. The world of Occultism is one which keeps on giving and I would hope that my uncle is aware of how successful his input to the genre was.

As of 2025, my family and I are hoping to get in touch with authors and Occultist professionals to work on his incomplete manuscripts and publish his last book to add to the collection he accumulated. I know this is something he would have wanted, and the manuscript will be in good hands.

Written by Natalia Georgopoulos

 

[1] Transmutation Publishing. (2018). The Moonchild of Yesod by Karl Stone. [online] Available at: https://www.transmutationpublishing.com/inventory/moonchild-yesod-karl-stone/ [Accessed 25 Feb. 2025].

[2] White, E.D. (2018). Wicca | History & Beliefs. In: Encyclopædia Britannica. [online] Available at: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Wicca.

[3] Stone, K. (1AD). The Moonchild of Yesod: A Grimore of Occult Hyperchemistry, or Typhonian Sex Magick. United Kingdom: The Imaginary Book Co, p. 31.

[4] Stone, K. (1AD). The Moonchild of Yesod: A Grimore of Occult Hyperchemistry, or Typhonian Sex Magick. United Kingdom: The Imaginary Book Co, p. 39.

[5] Jordan Fitzgerald, December 2015 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15763429-the-moonchild-of-yesod

[6] ibid

[7] C, January 2025 https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15763429-the-moonchild-of-yesod