Reviews 2004
Reviews 2004
✭✭✭✩✩
by William Shakespeare, directed by John Wood
Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
June 4-October 30, 2004
"Portrait of the Murderer as a Young Man"
The Stratford Festival is currently presenting its ninth production of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”. The play may not interest you because it is so often done and so often done poorly. But, having seen five of those nine productions, I can say that this is the most intelligent production of “Macbeth” I have ever seen at Stratford. Sadly, not all of the acting is up to scratch, but director John Wood has created an exciting production that makes us look at this familiar work in new ways.
Far too many productions of “Macbeth” get so carried away trying to conjure up visions of horror they ignore the psychological horror of the characters. Too many directors assume that the Weird Sisters are identical with the Three Fates of Greek myth or the Norns of Norse myth and portray Macbeth and his wife as puppets of fate, a silly view that absolves the Macbeths of the guilt they clearly feel. Wood has realized that “Macbeth” is about perception. He even has young Fleance play with a pair of lenses throughout the first part of the play to objectify this theme. Banquo’s comment to Macbeth on meeting the Weird Sisters is “Oftentimes to win us to our harm, The instruments of Darkness tell us truths”. Macbeth’s last comment on them in the play is “Be these juggling fiends no more believ’d, That palter with us in a double sense”. Wood makes clear that Macbeth and his wife see in the witches’ ambiguous remarks only what they wish to see. The world itself is ambiguous, “fair and foul”, and is what we perceive it to be.
Wood first removes any hint of the supernatural by first showing us the witches as ragged women--two old (Rita Howell and Sheena Larkin), one young (Tanya Low)--scavenging among the bodies of war dead. The young witch is led by rope around her waist and their actions lead us to think the three are not merely poor but insane. That Macbeth should credit them clearly becomes his will to do so. Unlike so many productions, Wood does not use special effects to show us the dagger Macbeth sees or Banquo’s ghost. Rather there simply is nothing there and both are imagined by Macbeth. In a neat trick, a goblet of wine overturns on its own after all but Lady Macbeth have left the table. Supernatural or accidental?--Wood thus puts us in the same interpretative position as the Macbeths.
Unlike most directors, Wood includes the “Hecate” scene of Act 3 that seems to support the “puppets of fate” view of the play. But even this Wood turns around. In a programme note he identifies the Weird sisters and Hecate as “travellers”, not “gypsies” who came from outside, but Scotland’s own nomadic workers. Hecate is their “Queen”, he says, and Joyce Campion plays her as if she were a madwoman. The cauldron used in Macbeth’s second visit to the witches is introduced as the pot where a group of these “travellers” is having its communal meal. When Macbeth appears to spy on them, that’s when the “Double double” chant starts as if we are seeing what Macbeth imagines in an otherwise innocent situation. The succeeding visions thus appear more from Macbeth’s fancy than from magic.
Graham Abbey might not be thought the right actor for Macbeth. He might seem too young and there is still a boyishness about his delivery. Yet, he suits Wood’s interpretation very well. Wood sets Abbey’s boyishness against the husky intensity of Lucy Peacock’s Lady Macbeth to establish the sexual dynamics that drive their actions. Lady Macbeth chides her husband for not be “man” enough to murder Duncan. Abbey fully captures Macbeth’s sense of doubt and insecurity particularly after the murder when he seems ready to collapse in fear. Wood’s Macbeth becomes a kind of anti-Hamlet who does wicked deed after deed to prove to himself an his wife that he has power. Only toward the end of the play might one wish an actor other than Abbey, who could more fully express Macbeth’s total disillusionment and despair.
Peacock’s Lady Macbeth is so strong she and her husband interact more like mother and son than wife and husband. She shows a strange mix of sexual excitement and motherly anger when urging her husband on or in bidding to calm himself. Wood shows that she has exhausted herself by the end of the banquet scene, where in an enigmatic pose of shame or despair she does not rise from the empty table. In Wood’s brilliant staging of the sleepwalking scene, Peacock captures the horror of someone who finds herself sinking alive into hell.
Walter Borden gives us a Duncan who far from being the kindly, frail old man we usually get, is vigorous and assertive. For once his comments on arrival at Inverness do not seem naive but rather expressions of a love of life. This only makes his murder seem all the worse. Sean Arbuckle gives Banquo a sense of assurance and common sense that contrasts well with Macbeth’s apparent weakness. Robert Persichini plays an entirely different Porter than you’ve seen before. He’s completely sober. The “Knock knock” lines are played as knock-knock jokes with the young Fleance. This change makes us pay more attention to lines and forces us to see that the Macbeths, not he, are the ones who are drunk.
Unfortunately, many of the other performances weaken the impact of the production. Gareth Potter plays Malcolm like a moody Hollywood star and needs to learn better voice control. Michael McLachlan speaks his lines well as Macduff but can’t rise to the emotional challenge when Macduff learns that his entire family has been slaughtered. Sarah McVie, a fairly generic Lady Macduff, doesn’t seem all that interested in her children. Roger Forbes as Ross and Keith Dinicol as Lenox use a orotund, overly theatrical way of speaking Shakespeare that contrasts with plain speaking of the rest. Paul Hopkins can’t seem to muster enough concern as the Doctor.
John Ferguson’s designs are appropriately minimalist. Only the requisite few pieces of furniture are brought on for each scene. The back of the stage is bare and the balcony removed creating an entrance to the dark unknown. His men’s costumes have modern trousers below and a smock with vests suggesting the medieval above, thus making the characters partake of both worlds.
Given the simplicity of the design, it falls to Gil Wechsler’s expressionist lighting effects to create mood. He has scenes gradually grow light and fade back into darkness or abruptly shift from dark to light, giving the production an hallucinatory feel. He and Wood create series of powerful stage pictures--Macbeth and his wife in shadow after the murder, divided by a huge shaft of light from an open door, or unforgettably Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking scene in blazing white light. Some may quibble with Wood’s interpolations of Scottish songs and certain mimed passages not found in Shakespeare’s text, but their effect is to underscore the normality that the Macbeths actions destroy.
This is the kind of Shakespeare production one wants to see at Stratford. Not the usual practice of merely setting a play in another time and place but an actual interpretation based on a close reading of the text. Unlike many directors at Stratford, Wood has challenged his actors not just to give their best to explore new areas of emotion. He has brought out qualities in Abbey and Peacock I never seen before. The result is a production that delves deeply into the text and without any gimmicks is riveting from first to last. Let’s hope for more at Stratford from this challenging, insightful director.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Lucy Peacock and Graham Abbey. ©2004 Stratford Festival.
2004-06-10
Macbeth