Macbeth
Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford upon Avon, 25th August 2011
Today I took my ten year-old daughter to see her first performance of Macbeth. She did not know the play and so I was eager to see her enjoyment (or otherwise) of the bloody plot as it enfolded. It is hard to remember a time when I did not know the story of Macbeth and so I can only imagine the excitement and horror that must be elicited for an uninformed viewer. We had excellent seats in the stalls where the actors felt close enough to touch. Being a matinee, the audience seemed unusually alert.
As the performance begins, artificial light pours through the shattered windows of a ruined church. This lighting effect was very satisfying as the impression of natural light was so convincing. The setting of the purged church grounded the play nicely in its Jacobite origins. After a hastily consumed, strong coffee shortly before the show I was somewhat jittery as the performance began. Much talk has been given over to the three witches being played by children and so I was eager to see whether or not this reworking of the text was successfully spooky. And lo, the sight of the three children hanging someway above the stage, corpse-like, as if swaying on the gallows was truly disturbing and I felt my caffeine-induced edginess increasing to something like nausea at this vision. They are lowered to the stage and each unhooks the other from their ropes/nooses. The children do this with a ghoulish look of knowing on their faces which has a Jamesian Turn of the Screw malice about it. However, all this is shattered when the children utter their first lines. Suddenly they are just children, with children’s sweetly high-pitched voices and their menace is reduced to nothing. Even the echo that is added to their lines did nothing to dispel their quaintness. The three excellent cellists, perched high up in front of the shattered windows were the only witchy reminder of ‘double, double toil and trouble.’
And enter Macbeth. Unfortunately, Jonathan Slinger has an underwhelming stage presence and is a goosy looking man. I found it hard to believe in his glory initially. He is eclipsed by the physically huge and powerful presence of Banquo (Steve Toussaint) and I found myself imagining the two men exchanging their roles to greater effect. It seems crucial to me that we, the audience, travel on a journey with Macbeth. Pride comes before a fall, of course, and we must believe in Macbeth’s glory; we must feel his pride or we cannot fully abhor what he becomes. But Jonathan Slinger has the voice projection and delivery of an old pro and Michael Boyd has made him into Macbeth, by hook or by crook, because he is an artless performer. Indeed, his soliloquy of ‘To-morrow, and to-morrow’, delivered from the top of a ladder stretching into nowhere, is probably the best that I have heard. This is where his talents lie. Unfortunately, when he has to share the stage with his Lady Macbeth (Aislin McGuckin) he is once more eclipsed, this time by her cold and consummate performance. Of course she dominates her husband but it is not necessary for her to appear so much the dominatrix both physically and mentally. In the first scenes of them together Slinger is like a soppy dog to her Elizabeth I. It was hard to imagine any chemistry between them and this was a shame as sexual greed goes hand-in-hand with the hunger for power. My daughter said that she did not like Lady Macbeth, which, I suppose, is as it should be.
There were some nice touches elsewhere in the play. Before the interval, the banquet scene takes place. During which, the ghost of Banquo attacks Macbeth and brutally stabs him, leaving him covered in blood. My daughter and I then went off to find the lavatories. This was no mean feat as the signs seem to send one round in an eternal loop. However, we were soon alerted to the large queue for the Ladies stretching out almost to the Bancroft Gardens. There was just time for us to grab some drinks and return to our seats for the second half. For a play that deals with false meaning and equivocation the previous, liberal imagining of the text is replayed after the interval but without the figure of Banquo present. We, therefore, get to see the madness of Macbeth as the other characters do. As he doubles up to take the imagined blows from Banquo’s dagger, the audience laughs and for a moment the play has descended into farce and pantomime. A welcome addition as far as my daughter was concerned.
Because ‘blood will have blood’ and perhaps because the ‘witches’ take up so much less time than the play dictates, other gory scenes are exaggerated to startling effect. After Duncan’s murder, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth appear in white night dresses. The blood is startling on Macbeth’s hands and clothing and we cannot help but anticipate his contaminating the white of Lady Macbeth’s garment. Indeed, these characters wear white often in the play after they have committed their crimes, to aid the metaphor of disguise; the ones in white are not the virtuous ones. The murder of Macduff’s children is played out on stage and there is not just one son but two sons and a daughter. They are the same children who play the witches which gives the play a sort of cyclical and fatalistic intuition. One has his throat slit, one has his neck broken which again brought to my mind The Turn of the Screw (but perhaps that was just me) and the daughter is sinisterly led off stage by one of the murderers whilst lady Macduff dies onstage as well.
Jamie Beamish plays a crazed amalgamation of the porter and Seyton to great effect. As he gives his speech about attending to the gates of hell the character lets off some bangers designed to appear like dynamite. This caused us all to jump out of our skins; a few of the older members of the audience had strokes. This allusion enhanced the image of the burning inferno but after the small explosions the theatre filled with the smoky smell of fireworks. This in turn brought to mind the gunpowder plot which was apt and gave me a little smile at such trickery.
The play ends with the bloodied, victorious figure of Malcom standing amongst his followers. Just as the RSC sends you in a circle to find their lavatories so too did the play end in a cyclical fashion. Malcolm stands, as he did in the opening scene of the play, bloodied and surrounded by his supporters. Only now he is King of Scotland rather than the King’s son. Order is restored. This seemed to be very satisfying to the audience whose applause were enthusiastic. My daughter and I agreed that we had been heartily entertained. I do not think that the children as witches delivered all that it should but I would not wish to criticise these innovative efforts. I will just look forward to my next viewing of Macbeth complete with warty, cackling harridans.
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