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.
