Macbeth (ETT, Northern Stage, Shakespeare North Playhouse)

Only 4 ? Which one are you missing ? (ETT, Donmar, Fiennes, Globe, RSC ....). 

I was at Saturday’s 2nd preview at the SNP and didn’t really get much out of it TBH. The recently installed Frons Scenae looks nice on the stage. This is used as the Macbeths home where the entire play is set in. You get plenty if on stage camera work that wouldn’t look out of place in a Van Hove production along with some karaoke and live bagpipe playing as well. As an advisory, if you are sat in the stalls, there is some audience participation in that 2 people get to go on stage and participate in one scene (it is a non speaking role).

The traditional 3 witches opening scene has been rewritten to look like something out of The Crucible (with plenty of local references) with a witch trial that completely seems out of place with the rest of the play. It is very much a modern take with modern clothing.

I have booked for the Fiennes Macbeth in November so am hoping for a better show.

What a mess this production is. All the witch scenes at the start have been entirely cut which gets things off to the worst possible start. A low point comes in the English scene when Malcolm (a young black woman) gives us a karaoke version of Yes Sir I Can Boogie - I felt sorry for her and the rest of the cast (and audience).

2*

Right. And it includes getting audience members up on stage to participate in the shambles.

Just incidentally when Macduff is advised of the death of his entire family he too gives us a snatch of Yes Sir I Can Boogie. And yet Alexandra was just telling us that Macduff’s reaction in the Donmar Macbeth was the most moving she had seen.

One interesting idea was they make it quite explicit that Lady M has very recently lost her baby. That works well.

In a way it is a deeply conservative production because it just recycles a lot of fashionable but commonplace directorial conceits irrespective of whether they serve the play or not. Here we have video cameras, slow motion, audience interaction, microphones, glitter balls, anachronistic pop songs. We also have torches (commonplace) and UV light (rare but not unknown) but in the form of UV torches which is new. The only really new idea was at one point they had the entire cast appear wearing blue dresses and long blonde wigs - even as I type that it occurs to me how ridiculous that sounds in a production of Macbeth. 

This sort of thing is why I haven't seen any Shakespeare plays for some years! There isn't a single thing on that list that I wish to see in a Shakespeare production.

More problematic is the reason they were there is that it's a GCSE set book - if they base any of the exam answers on this production they will fail, puzzling the marker with mention of Lady Macbeth's breast pump and so on. The Fiennes Macbeth would have been a far better choice for them - entirely conventional though somewhat dull. 

One problem with the character of Macbeth is that he's presented as a very successful professional soldier who goes to pieces after he's killed the King. Why would he ? Why would it bother him ? Fiennes had no answer for that at all. Antony Sher was quite convincing in the part making Macbeth extremely superstitious and unstable - that option is removed in this production by having no witch scenes at all at the beginning and it goes downhill from there.