As with the RSC's recent production of Macbeth, the reviews for the National Theatre's rendition of the Scottish Play were less than praising. Criticised for misjudging the play's themes and glorifying its violence in a 'Mad Max'-style setting, the production has been cited as one in a long line of flops from the National Theatre under artistic director Rufus Norris. Yet, as with the RSC production, I sat down for the live screening with an open mind - and was pleasantly surprised. Here's my thoughts.
It was the staging which really set this production apart (and divided the opinion of critics), so I'll start there. For me, the post-apocalyptic setting with its grey and gunmetal-blue hues, carved into by a sweeping ramp and tall masts, gave this play a shocking new lease of life. It is unclear whether we are in the past or the present: the ramp could be a moorland heath, or the track for a mechanised war machine; the masts could be skeletal trees, gibbet poles, or electricity pylons. Macbeth is set in the midst of a civil war, where tyrants reign and innocents are slaughtered, and where violence and power walk hand-in-hand. The landscape, Shakespeare writes, is 'blasted' - why then is it strange to transpose the play's themes into a 'blasted' landscape of today - in Iraq, in Syria, or to push it even further into a post-nuclear future, in an earth ruined by war, anarchy, and climate change?
A short video before the live screening saw set designer Rae Smith talking about her choices behind the ramp which dominates the set. In a large fan-shaped auditorium like the Olivier (where audiences could be sat close or further away, facing straight-on or viewing from the side), and for the purposes of live screening (where distance/angle could be manipulated by camera positions), it was important to Norris and Smith to be able to reflect the sometimes-intimate, sometimes-broad scenes in the play. The claustrophobia of the bloody banquet requires a different stage space to the open moorland where Macbeth encounters the witches. The ramp achieves this. Standing at the top of the ramp, actors are distant and aloft, suitable for characters such as the witches who are the puppeteers of the action and whose corporeal forms are a lot less clear; at the lower, wider section of the ramp, scenes become more intimate, suitable for characters such as Macbeth whose anxieties, griefs, and humanity are under our closest scrutiny. The ramp can sweep silently across the stage, allowing for seamless scene transitions, capable of opening up the stage space or of dividing it up.
The greatest interaction with the set and its versatility came from the witches. In their first entrance, they appear at different levels of the ramp: one from the top, another from the side, and the third from the stage floor, coming to take a stance at the bottom of the ramp. One high, one middle, and one low - first witch, second witch, third witch. Their characterisations are at once robotic and sporadic: one enters while making a low, sombre chant, another while making a high-pitched, discordant shriek; one moves slowly, ceremoniously, while another runs pell-mell about the stage. They speak in sequence, as per the script, but their voices are mechanical and out of tune. One or two appear to wear a gory display of organs, fetuses and umbilical cords around their necks, making frightful their silhouettes and blurring the boundaries of dead or alive, human or supernatural, real or imaginary. At the end of the play all three observe the battle from atop the trees/pylons, which shake and sway as the witches revel in the fulfilment of their prophecy. When Macbeth is decapitated (in neat symmetry with the opening scene), and Malcolm crowned king, they slip down the masts soundlessly, and exit the stage.
Another compelling aspect of this production was the fierce chemistry that Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff put into the characters of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. This was the first production of Macbeth where I was truly convinced of their love for one another, not just of themselves. When Macbeth rushes home to his wife ahead of the king's company, and barges into their tiny cubicle of a room to see her, it truly feels like a solider returning from war and driven by love, rather than anxiety and anticipation. Kinnear is a sympathetic Macbeth, and Duff delivers her monologues with great clarity and emotion, conveying not cruelty but desperation. When Duncan arrives at their home moments later, it is his presence that feels oppressive, and we can almost see why the newly-reunited Macbeths would want this pompous man and his cohort driven out of their lives.
Macbeth's 'madness' (or, as the war-torn setting makes clear, post-traumatic stress disorder) is already evident at the play's opening - he is a man in make-shift armour, broken by war, at ease with removing a man's head with a machete and bagging it up as a trophy. The fear and anxiety comes when death is brought off the battlefield and into the home, when his beloved wife is involved and her fate too is at stake. We get the sense that Macbeth (and Lady Macbeth) have lost too many friends and loved ones, possibly children, to risk losing one another. After her death (the later half of the 'sound and fury' speech is delivered as he cradles her body, giving more emotion to this lament than many previous productions have allowed for), he fights and dies without fear or anxiety. 'Enough' he says as he bleeds out - without his wife, without an heir, he is done. His head is bagged up as a trophy, and for once, I actually felt sorry for the tragic end of the Macbeths.
My final comment? Give this production a chance. If you're unsure about the modernisation or staging, read or watch a few interviews with Rufus Norris (such as the one below) or Rae Smith to get a sense of what they were envisioning. Go in with an open mind and enjoy, or at least appreciate, what the production is trying to do.
Macbeth runs at the National Theatre, London, until the 23 June, before embarking on a UK and Ireland tour from September 2018. More details here.
Photo credit:
All by Brinkhoff and Moegenburg, from the National Theatre webpage, found here.
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