Macbeth at Doc X

 Let me start by saying that I really admire Ralph Fiennes as an actor – there’s not many who can be equally at home taking over the role of M from Judi Dench (what shoes to fill!!), terrifying a generation of Harry Potter fans as Voldemort and – perhaps just as terrifying – portraying Richard III. And now Macbeth. So I approached the show with great anticipation, but this production is best summed up by my good friend Kate: ‘There’s no oomph’.

It started well: Doc X is a huge warehouse, and as we were admitted into the auditorium we passed through an installation of a bleak, wartorn wasteland with a burnt out car, rubbish strewn around and dead trees. The set itself was equally bleak – a gray bare stage with steps up from the auditorium and more steps up to a house front with entrances at stage and upper levels. This enabled some characters, notably the witches, to literally oversee the action at times.

The witches themselves were cleverly presented as young refugees from the war – three young women who began the show by crawling on to the stage as if out of some bombed out building. The role of the supernatural was ambivalent – there were no Paddock or Greymalkin, no sailor’s wife eating chestnuts, no Hecate and the cauldron scene was cut completely, but they did wind the charm up before meeting Macbeth and the apparitions were created by an external force taking over the murderers and the witches themselves to give Macbeth the familiar predictions about Birnam Wood. Macbeth himself was ‘taken over’ and saw in his imagination Banquo’s line of kings under the influence of the witches who held him. All that worked for me.

But many of the characters lacked development, mainly due to the way the script was edited: we saw the sergeant reporting to Duncan, but he managed only the first speech before needing his wounds tended, and Malcolm was not introduced at this stage – so we lost the initial portrait of the young princeling who had to be freed after captivity. There was a little hint of Malcolm’s youthful glee at being named his father’s successor, but to me, the Malcolm who took the stage as king in the final scene was substantially the same person as at the start.

The first commendations of Macbeth’s bravery from Duncan were also lost, as was the juxtaposition of the King’s recognition of his misplaced trust in Cawdor and his greeting of Macbeth as ‘Worthiest cousin’, as this scene was edited to allow Macbeth and Banquo to remain on stage, Duncan to greet them and then receive reports of Cawdor’s death.

The two early Macbeth soliloquys were delivered as by an old, battle-weary soldier, and at that point I would have said he didn’t have the energy to follow up his dark desires….while Lady Macbeth had if anything too much energy. She whirled round the stage after reading the letter, and seemed to try to scoop up the forces of darkness – for me, it was all too light-hearted. When Macbeth returned home, standing at the top of the steps, she literally fell at his feet – not the power balance I expected. And as a couple they had very little chemistry, and despite being on stage together for most of the first half of the play there was little physical contact: he greeted her on the line ‘Duncan comes here tonight’ by groping her bottom in an awkward embrace, and she pushed him back during the banquet. Their conflicts were more convincing, but when she taunted him with being a coward, he merely flicked water at her…. The constant movement around the stage – at one point he appeared to be chasing her – may have been to do with the need to project to all parts of the cavernous auditorium, but it lessened the sense of drama.

The water itself was a nice touch: a table with a clear bowl of water and towels was brought on as Lady Macbeth entered for the first time: Macbeth washed his hands and face after his journey and later, when he plunged his hands into the water after the murder of Duncan, it neatly illustrated the line ‘my hand will rather / The multitudinous seas in incarnadine’.

I recall a friend commenting on our production of Macbeth that so often Banquo fades into the background, while our Banquo ‘really came alive’ as the voice of reason – seeing this version, I see what she means, for Banquo, like Malcolm, never really spoke to us as a character. The decision to bring his bloody ghost onstage in the banquet scene just served to remind me that during his murder, he was stabbed in the neck, the back and the side, but when he received the death blow to the stomach and fell, the only visible blood was on his front. Yet the ghost had blood on his face and neck….

Even Lady Macbeth didn’t follow the character arc I expected – she seemed to be fully in charge – of herself and her husband – right through to the banquet scene, and then break apart.

The character of Seyton was another bit of confusion – he (or at least the same actor in the same costume) appeared as Lady Macbeth’s messenger, and the gentlewoman in the sleepwalking scene, and then in the later scenes with Macbeth. Is it just me who noticed that he was standing beside Macbeth when the cry of women was heard; remained onstage beside Macbeth during the next speech and then informed him that the queen was dead – how did he know??

Having said all that, Macduff was far more engaging: his scene with Malcolm was well played; yet even here there were confusing details: Macduff arrived escorted and in handcuffs. Ok – so rather than seeking Malcolm out in England, he had been captured and brought to Malcolm. Yet Malcolm then removed the cuffs – not once he had established his honesty, but halfway through the speech about his avarice….why?

Macduff’s reaction to the news of his family’s slaughter was heartrending: rather than railing at himself, fate and the gods, he slumped onto the steps and sat for a long while in silence – just as effective as invective. Another interesting detail was bringing Macduff’s wife and two children onstage early in the play: they accompanied Duncan on his visit to Macbeth.

The battle elements, with armies coming into the auditorium from all sides, were effective, and the final fight well-choreographed with long knives rather than swords as befits a modern interpretation, but I was left feeling that this was at its root a traditional approach to the play, and all the set dressing told us nothing about Macbeth that we didn’t get from the script which was delivered in a generally lacklustre way.