Macbeth

Kate Mulvany and Dan Spielman in Macbeth (photo by Rush)

By Elissa Blake

Unlike most composers, Kelly Ryall believes he’s doing a good job when his audience isn’t really aware of the sounds he is making. “Often it’s about making sounds disappear,” says Ryall, as he puts the finishing touches to his soundtrack for Bell Shakespeare’s upcoming production of Macbeth.

“For example, you can set up a sonic environment around a character and then suddenly pull it away to leave the actor very alone on stage,” Ryall explains. “Audiences find that really unsettling. It can be way spookier than a huge wall of sound in your face.”

Ryall is one of the most in-demand composers and sound designers for the stage. His recent work includes the jarring soundtrack to The Boys (Griffin), whose effect the Sydney Morning Herald’s review likened to that of Bernard Hermann’s music for Alfred’s Hitchcock’s Psycho: “… like the “shower scene” [it] embodies the brutality of a crime we hardly dare imagine.”

“I like to make the audience feel a sound as much as hear a sound,” says Ryall. “The more an audience feels it, the more they are able to join with the action on the stage. In The Boys, it was about putting a sound to feelings that drove men to murder. I got a percussionist to imagine what it would be like to stalk someone with drums and them actually kill them. He found it quite confronting but you have to go to some quite dark places in order to get this stuff sometimes.”

Scoring for the murder-filled Macbeth requires a different approach, says Ryall.

“With Shakespeare, the text is so full of imagery and so poetic that when you put music to it, it can make everything seem overdramatic,” he says. “For me it’s about tiptoeing underneath it all. We have subliminal sounds that creep in. Sometimes, you’re not sure they’re even there. It will be like an aural hallucination.”

As well as creating an electronic soundtrack, Ryall has written several string quartets for the play. “I think Shakespeare marries well with music coming from the classical tradition. I was thinking about Peter Greenaway’s films – like The Cook, The Thief, The Wife & Her Lover - and the way Michael Nyman’s music works in those. It’s quite a painterly way to depict violence.”

Kelly Ryall

Ryall likes to be in the rehearsal room from the start and he stays throughout the process, adjusting and tweaking his score as the actors grow into their roles.

“I spend a lot of time ducking little bits in and seeing where they fit and where they don’t,” he says. “It becomes a really beautiful dance between music and performers.”

Ryall says he is developing a very particular soundscape for Lady Macbeth, played by actor Kate Mulvany. “It will be less about music and more about the way you will hear her voice,” he explains. “It will be like she’s whispering the speech in your ear.”

Ryall’s work is always subtle, says Mulvany. “It’s like the beating pulse behind everything going on and before you know it, your own pulse is racing. Kelly gives us all a subtle shot of adrenaline.”

Bell Shakespeare’s Macbeth plays at the Sydney Opera House March 30 – May 12, 2012.

This story was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on March 31, 2012.

To listen to samples of his theatre compositions, head to his website here.