BELL Shakespeare’s excitement is palpable that the Palestinian-Australian actor playing the lead role in the coming production of “Macbeth” won a Logie in 2018.

But although Hazem Shammas has made himself famous in recent years for his roles in TV shows “Safe Harbour” and “The Twelve”, and will be starring in the upcoming Disney+ series “The Clearing”, he graduated in acting from the WA Academy of Performing Arts in 2001 and has been a regular working actor on the stage ever since.

As he tells me by phone from Sydney: “I’m grateful for my training with Gillian Jones… without that kind of craft, I don’t think I could’ve played Macbeth,” he says. 

Born into a Palestinian community in Fassuta, a tiny village near the Lebanese border with Israel, Shammas came here when very young and was schooled in Sydney’s west. But he has never lost his sympathy for refugees, and became an ambassador with Settlement Services International.

“Macbeth” is, we agree, an incredibly famous play and share our remarkably similar experiences of formidable school English teachers who gave us a lifelong love of this work.

“So many people know the play, you can see people mouthing along with you in the audience,” he says. 

Besides, as my English teacher taught me, it has the perfect plot, complete with a clear moment in the play, when Macbeth realises he can’t turn back.

We take a moment to discuss the “Scottish” play’s reputation as being a dangerous one to put on or be in and theatrical superstitions prohibiting uttering the word “Macbeth” in a theatre.

“We are relaxed about it,” Shammas says, giving me a quick history lesson about the origins of the superstitions, “but the folklore sometimes comes out.”

So, what is the enduring attraction of “Macbeth”?

It’s become a universal story, famous in Japan from Akira Kurosawa’s film “Throne of Blood” and seen during 2021 in a Noongar language translation called “Hecate”, spearheaded by director-actor Kyle Morrison, who has joined the Bell cast for this production. 

There’s a particularly famous translation of “Macbeth” into Arabic, Shammas tells me, and many Arabic speakers believe that Shakespeare was an Arab.

“Our national heroes are all poets, and we appreciate poetry,” he adds in explanation.

There are deep reasons, he believes, why Macbeth, though bloody, is one of the most compelling of tragic heroes. 

“He is all feeling, he has a deep sense of ethics and morality… Right from the start, he’s having a kind of panic attack about the thought of murder and the shame of it, about his sense of right and wrong.”

Sure, he goes ahead with actions that lead to murder, but that madness comes from a very deep moral code and in Shammas’s view, the audience is almost sympathetic with “the criminal couple”.

“Pure genius,” he says. 

In this production, the focus on the love relationship between Macbeth and his wife has been emphasised by director Peter Evans, who is a self-declared “Macbeth” obsessive.

Jessica Tovey plays Lady Macbeth and together they have interpreted the play as a love narrative with a kind of break-up story. 

“Their love, even if it is narcissistic, is what takes them down – a childless couple, heading into middle age with perhaps a 30-year relationship behind them, but they’re still very much into each other,” he says.

Scholars have ruminated on their back story? How did they come together? Why do they love each other so much that it takes them to the edge of morality?

Whatever, it all comes to nothing, and when Macbeth hears of her death while in the middle of battle, he says apathetically: “She should have died hereafter; There would have been a time for such a word.”

“He’s lost the love of his life and his greatest fear has been to be without a legacy. He has nothing,” Shammas says. 

So, in a play full of showstopping speeches, what is his favourite scene? 

It’s the scene in Act 3 where the ghost of his murdered friend, Banquo, appears to him at a banquet.

“Suddenly the world shifts and his mind crumbles,” Shammas says, “I’m thrown around the stage by a ghost that no one else can see – I’m told it’s a joy to watch.”

Bell Shakespeare, “Macbeth”, The Playhouse, April 14-22.