| . | 04/23/2008
Macbeth
By: Victor Gluck
Patrick Stewart as Macbeth
(photo credit: Manuel Hartlan)
Rupert Goold’s Chichester Festival Theatre Production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth starring Patrick Stewart that has moved to Broadway from the Brooklyn Academy of Music is exhilarating and galvanizing. It is also inconsistent and confusing. It is a high energy, high concept revival. And therein lies the rub. Don’t blame the actors. From Stewart’s commanding performance in the title role down to the minor roles of servants and soldiers, their work is riveting, lucid and direct. The trouble with updating Shakespeare to modern times is that not all of the Elizabethan text makes sense in a contemporary context if none of the lines are changed. The elements that don’t work become distracting in an otherwise fascinating production.
Making his New York debut, Goold is obviously a brilliantly inventive new director. However, here he seems at times to have pushed the envelope too far. His inspiration has been Stalin’s Great Terror. From Lady Macbeth’s costumes (long, ankle length dresses) it would seem that the play is set in the 1950’s. However, a color television monitor which appears in some scenes suggests otherwise, as does Lady Macduff’s pants suits. Scotland and England are still ostensibly the settings. The choral music sung in Russian is startling as is the video footage of Soviet troops on parade. Then, the scene of Banquo’s murder on a train (clever idea) is framed by video of German railroad stations going by. Where exactly are we?
How do you deal with the three witches in modern times? Goold’s solution has been to put them in identical basic grey costumes that at times suggest nuns and at other times nurses. Attempting to create a through line for their characters, Goold has them show up as nurses in the first scene after the battle, then as witches revealing to Macbeth his fate. Next they show up in the same costumes as servants at the banquet, and later as attendants in a morgue. How is it Macbeth doesn’t recognize them? The audience certainly does. A costume change might have made this less noticeable.
He has also attempted a through line for many of the other characters that do not have one in Shakespeare’s text. Some of this is quite successful; at other times, confusing. A character called “Lady Macbeth’s servant” appears in many scenes given lines usually apportioned to various walk-ons. Lady Macduff originally had one single scene. Here she and her three children accompany her husband to Macbeth’s castle at the beginning of the play just before he finds King Duncan murdered. She is even given some of Macduff’s lines. Seeing her and the children this early in the play makes their subsequent murder and Macduff’s stunned reaction much more powerful as we already have a relationship with them.
The role of Ross has been built up making him a sort of minister without portfolio, a recognizable character sporting glasses, a briefcase and a nervous laugh. The scene in which Lennox meets an anonymous lord and catches up on the news is given a new slant with Lennox instead questioning Ross in what resembles a KGB interrogation in a basement room. The Porter appears continually after his usual single scene, and he continues to be just as sarcastic and impudent. All of this is more than a little disconcerting for anyone who knows the play. It would probably help to approach this production without any prior expectations.
On the other hand, Goold’s spare, focused direction makes the play an engrossing experience. Stewart is first seen in guerilla fatigues coming off of the battlefield and he remains the cool, taciturn military leader who carefully plots his campaign to become the next king of Scotland. With ramrod posture and his low, but resonant baritone he commands attention in all of his scenes. He is matched by Kate Fleetwood as his Lady Macbeth. She makes us fully understand how she goads her husband into his initial atrocities with her withering sarcasm and demanding rebukes. Her physical and mental decline after the murder of King Duncan is also fully delineated from the moment she faints to the later reports of her sleepwalking and illness.
Even with Stewart center stage, this is very much an ensemble production and all of the roles stand out in full relief. Martin Turner’s Banquo is a sensitive, troubled man from the moment he suspects what Macbeth is capable of doing. Michael Feast turns Macduff into a savage killing machine, a rough-hewn warrior. Scott Handy’s Prince Malcolm is a much stronger, three dimensional figure, than is usually played, particularly in the scene in which he tempts Macduff to betray himself.
Though he appears only briefly as Duncan, King of Scotland, who stands in Macbeth’s way, Byron Jennings makes it quite clear that he is fully in charge and an excellent ruler, not the doddering old man he is often portrayed to be. Tim Treloar’s unctuous Ross and Mark Rawling’s single-minded Lennox, both usually unnoticed, make considerable contributions to Macbeth’s court. So too do Christopher Patrick Nolan as the foul-mouthed Porter and Oliver Birch as the Macbeths’ servant who in the course of the play puts up with a great deal from his masters.
Aside from the updating, the most controversial element of the production has proven to be Anthony Ward’s setting. Except when blanked out by video projections such as that of the forest of Birnam Wood, the setting remains a white bricked basement room, shabby and in need of repair, with a sink, a refrigerator and an old-fashioned gated elevator through which most of the entrances are made. Resembling a bunker, it is asked to stand in for an army hospital, castle rooms such as dining room, bedroom, kitchen, entrance way, etc. Most of the time, it is successful. However, there are times when the look of a basement with its ever present elevator seems out of place.
Ward’s 20th century costume designs are entirely suitable for the totalitarian environment. A particularly inventive touch is the scene before Macbeth’s banquet in which the cast comes on stage dressed as if from a fox hunt. While Lorna Heavey’s video and projection design are part of the problematic concept, Howard Harrison’s lighting is heavily atmospheric, often turning the basement setting into various other locales. Terry King’s vigorous fight direction also adds tension to the militaristic milieu.
Shakespeare’s Macbeth has proven to be notoriously difficult to stage successfully. Recall the failed New York productions in recent memory that starred Christopher Plummer, Kelsey Grammer, Alec Baldwin and Liev Schreiber. It is to director Rupert Goold’s credit that this updated Macbeth works as well as it does. Despite some of the ill-conceived directorial and scenic touches, Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood lead an excellent company in an always exciting and inventive revival.
Macbeth (through May 24)
Lyceum Theatre, 149 W. 45th Street, in Manhattan
For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or http://www.telecharge.com
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