Macbeth
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Rufus Norris
Set Designed by Rae Smith
Music by Orlando Gough
Olivier Theatre at The National Theatre
Saturday 5thMay 2018 14.00
The National Theatre on a May afternoon: so light outside, so dark within …
CAST
Rory Kinnear – Macbeth
Anne-Marie Duff – Lady Macbeth
With
Nadia Albina – Gentlewoman
Michael Balogun – Doctor (OFF SICK)
Stephen Boxer – Duncan
Trevor Fox – Porter
Andrew Frame – Siward / Murderer
Kevin Harvey – Banquo
Hannah Hutch – witch / boy
Nicholas Karimi – Lennox
Joshua Lacey – murderer
Penny Layden – Rosse
Anna-Maria Nabirye – witch
Patrick O’Kane – MacDuff
Amaka Okafor – Lady MacDuff
Hauk Pattison- ensemble
Alana Ramsey – murderer, doctor (understudy)
Beatrice Scirocchi – witch
Rakhee Sharma – Fleance
Parh Thakerar – Malcolm
+
Sarah Homer- bass clarinet, new wind instruments
Lacticia Scott – French horn, new wind instruments
Anne Marie Duff as Grungy Lady Macbeth, Rory Kinnear as Crusty Macbeth
Oh, bugger. The major reviews were pretty uniform, and negative. As Domenic Cavendish pointed out in his review of the rival Macbeth at the RSC:
… this (RSC) lamentable Macbeth (is) the second dismal account of the Scottish play from a major subsidised theatre we’ve had to suffer in a fortnight. What’s alarming is that both this revival by Polly Findlay for the RSC and Rufus Norris’s for the National did sell-out business at the box-office prior to opening night. By my reckoning, excluding the cinema screenings, the Barbican run and the NT’s autumn tour, that’s potentially around 130,000 underwhelmed punters.
Domenic Cavendish
Indeed. They did sell-out business and we bought tickets as soon as it was announced, and we couldn’t get to see it early in the run either. So here we are, with low expectations. Good cast. Dystopian future (in the cast list it’s “SETTING: Now, after a Civil War) I’ve seen that one, for example in the Trafalgar Studios version. Maybe they’ve read the reviews and changed it? But it’s not commercial theatre. They’ve sold out the entire run. They don’t need to. As with Absolute Hell in the Lyttelton next door, it has changed length since previews. The programme states “About 3 hours including one 20 minute interval.” We were out at 4.30 from a 2 pm start, so 2 hours 10 minutes stage time rather than their predicted 2 hours 40 minutes.
The National tends to one HUGE Shakespeare every year or so in the Olivier Theatre. Twelfth Night 2017, As You Like It 2015, King Lear 2014, Othello 2013, Timon of Athens 2012, Hamlet 2010. It’s very hard to fill that vast stage, so productions tend to massive casts, major sets, use the revolve stage incessantly and absolutely no expense spared. Every time, I grudgingly admire these big productions, but think how many provincial playhouses could have their worries solved by spreading that money around more fairly. It is supposed to be the “National” Theatre NOT the “London Theatre” but from the provinces it’s far harder to justify membership for priority bookings (and if you don’t have it, you don’t get good seats, and we don’t have it, and we end up at the extreme sides) , and Londoners get a disproportionate amount of benefit from it.
Set design: Macbeth, National Theatre. Decapitated body in foreground. Macbeth did it.
I mention the basic problem with dystopian Macbeths in my review of Jamie Lloyd’s Trafalgar Studio production from 2013, set fifty years ahead:
Because the world of 2063 gives us a warring pack of savages, we lose the sense of the religious horror of regicide, murdering an anointed king … Duncan is merely an older and grizzlier pack member waiting to be pulled down if he hobbles slightly; nor the sense that Macbeth achieved great royal power. In such a band, top dog is always a temporary position and doesn’t come with robes or crowns.
The Elizabethan / Jacobean audience were well aware of the extreme horror of killing an anointed king. Generations of royals had combined and persuaded pliant churchmen to make regicide an unforgivable sin: hell was inevitable for the perpetrator. The Macbeths crime is the worst possible: killing a guest, killing a king.
This production is bookended by decapitations, and the whole sloping platform has been designed to facilitate that. Did no one think, “Hey, Macbeth opens the play by slowly sawing the head off an enemy. So how come he’s then horrified by a little bit of blood?”
Thinks: “To kill a King … ” Rory Kinnear as Macbeth, Patrick O’Kane as MacDuff, Stephen Boxer as King Duncan
The costumes are crusty / summer solstice traveller. The royals are marked by red suits … Duncan wears one, Macbeth gets one, as does the parade of Banquo’s offspring at the start of the second part. In their favour, the play sticks closely to its crusty grungy ambience, while most high concept versions drift and lose their reference point. The Macbeth’s “castle” is one room of a concrete bunker or anti-tank pill-box. A later section has a molten hole burned out of the wall by an incendiary rocket.
Macbeth’s pill-box castle (he now has the red suit of monarchy). “This castle has a pleasant seat. The air nimbly and sweetly recommends itself unto our gentle senses.” as Duncan says.
Unusually, we see Macbeth walk past the snoozing guards and sleeping Duncan in their half-wrecked portakabin before deciding on murder. Later, Malcolm gives his speech next to Duncan’s bloody corpse. It looks consistently crusty BUT emphasises that these guys would never had had any reverence for kingship whatsoever. The poverty of the ennobled royal Macbeths, living in squalor, totally undermines the theme of the play. They have a feast on trestle tables with battered old chairs and billy cans. So what? Why are these savages agonising about knocking off another savage?
Lady Macbeth near the end in royal sequinned tat.
The murder of the MacDuff family was embarrassingly bad. The tickling looked like child abuse. Please, please never put another actor in ironic Disney Jim-jams ever again. Not funny. Awful. No more heads in transparent plastic bags either. Zero tension nor horror. About the worst I’ve ever seen a crucial scene. A shame as Patrick O’Kane did MacDuff’s reaction to the murder so movingly. One has to assume he hadn’t watched that bit.
The lighting plot was extremely good. They used a mechanical follow-spot a lot (I date from manual follow spots) which cast light on individuals from above. It worked most of the time, but not in Lady Macbeth’s first scene in the concrete bunker /pill box because the follow spot was falling on the bunker wall, so the light on the wall was constantly moving as she moved. Irritating. You’re supposed to avoid it dancing around on a vertical surface.That was “Lighting 101” in my day, but that was a very long time ago.
Malcolm & MacDuff in England, where they have a nice table AND (just out of shot) a carpet.
I’m sure every actor was boosted by mics. The Olivier Theatre is a huge space. With Banquo it was screamingly obvious, as his voice appeared to come from the speakers, not him. Was his projection lacking so that they over-boosted it? The central witch had added echo on her mic too. Banquo, once dead, had to spend much of the play lurching about, either drunkenly or brained by a head wound. Yes, he was dead, but the dead reappearing in later scenes is (a) in the text and (b) over- done in SO MANY Shakespeare productions.
It was an accent free for all. The porter (exactly as at the RSC) was Geordie. MacDuff was Belfast aggressive. Banquo was a Scouser. Lennox was Scots. Ross was Yorkshire. One witch seemed to be Spanish. Accent-blind is not to my taste. I’ve worked so much with accents on audio, so I seek a rationale.
Macbeth with witches: the end is nigh
There are some visual highlights in a very dark and murky production. The parade of Banquo’s descendants is a major one, They have heads on back to front and the red kingly jackets on back to front … except for just one who had it on the right way round. My companion surmises that he/she was last out of the dressing room, so had no one left to button it up for him/her.
Later we see the witches grasping poles to watch the final scenes. Pole dancing? The moving ramp, and revolving stage with silvery backdrops looked spectacular, though deliberately under lit in busier scenes.
The two musicians did a stellar job on clarinet and new wind instruments, assisted by a beats rhythm track. It really enhanced moods (though I have doubts about music undrerlying essential dialogue.)
On casting, they chose two of my favourite actors, Joshua Lacey and Nadia Albina, and put them in tiny insignificant bit parts. These are two of the best actors in the cast … I think of Joshua Lacey as Cloton in Imogen and Orsino in Twelfth Night at The Globe, and Nadia Albina at the RSC and Globe, who has such a beautiful voice. And they end up as First murderer (quickly killed) and “gentlewoman.” WTF? I’d have preferred them (and cast them) as the two leads.
The comparison with the concurrent RSC production is inevitable. That RSC one failed on set, costumes, lights and sound but Christopher Ecclestone and Sinead Cusack and Edward Bennett were superb. It’s all in Ecclestone’s profile, voice and intensity. Rory Kinnear is a fine actor, but he paced so much of his dialogue oddly and never has the necessary physical presence. She didn’t have any sense of pace. They did not fall into synch as they should. Let’s be personal. He does not have “the look.” His bald head with hair at the back makes him look middle-aged. He does not have Ecclestone’s hard man aura, and he would have looked far tougher if like Patrick O’Kane’s MacDuff (and me) he had shaved the lot off. It’s shorter in the photos than it was today. He was brilliant as Hamlet, Iago and Marx, but Macbeth is not his role. . I thought Ecclestone, Cusack and Bennett were far better. BUT this had a stronger concept, some great visual moments and lighting, but weaker principal actors.
Domenic Cavendish is right, neither the RSC nor the National justified their public money with Macbeth this year. Neither were in the same league as the recent Young Vic production. Nor the Globe one with Ray Fearon and brilliant witches. They cut this one heavily and as in Absolute Hell next door, cut it more after previews. How can you get the extent 30-40 minutes wrong after rehearsals twice in the same month? Aren’t these professionals?
In the words of Thomas Hobbes it was, “Nasty, Brutish and Short.” Mercifully short. Following Absolute Hell, that means two “two star” poor National Theatre productions in two days. That’s a real problem. It breaks the “must book the National” inclination. It certainly has for us.
Two stars.
**
NT LIVE BROADCAST 10thMAY 2018
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
4 star
Scott Matthewman, Reviews Hub ****
3 star
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times ***
His revival retains the usually cut minor character Angus but excises King Duncan’s younger son Donalbain. Some of the most famous lines and even scenes are jettisoned. In more minor cuts and rewrites, metre counts for nothing
Holly Williams, The Independent ***
David Butcher, Radio Times ***
Mark Shenton, London Theatre ***
2 star
Michael Billington, The Guardian **
while the production is vigorously staged, it squeezes the play into a rigid concept and in the process sacrifices its tonal contrasts and mysterious poetry.
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph, **
On the evidence of this woeful Macbeth, the pressure is on the NT’s artistic director once again, undertaking his first Shakespeare in 25 years and seemingly restoring the curse to the Olivier that has blighted so many shows here of late … I’m not saying Norris’s head should roll, but dark and bloody thoughts may seize those, like me, left mightily unmoved and unharrowed
Ann Treneman, The Times **
Henry Hitchings, The Evening Standard **
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail **
“It is a low-lit mess engulfed by blunt grottiness … The artistic aim is dystopia but the grime is so overdone that it made some audience members chuckle. Hardly a night of tragedy.
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out **
Toss in some baffling cuts to the text that don’t seem to serve much purpose beyond wrestling the running time down a bit and you’re stuck with a big, blasted mess of a show
Natasha Tripney, The Stage **
Marinka Swain, Broadway World **
1 star
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage *
This production is a misjudged mess, a horror show in all the wrong ways, and a terrible waste of the acting talents of Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie Duff.”
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:
MACBETH
Macbeth, RSC 2011 Jonathan Slinger as Macbeth
Macbeth – McAvoy 2013, Trafalgar Studio, James McAvoy as Macbeth
Macbeth – Tara Arts 2015 (Shakespeare’s Macbeth) on tour, Poole Lighthouse
Macbeth, Young Vic, 2015
Macbeth – Globe 2016, Ray Fearon as Macbeth
Macbeth, RSC, 2018 Christoper Ecclestone as Macbeth
Macbeth, Wanamaker Playhouse 2018, Paul Ready as Macbeth
Macbeth, Watermill Theatre, 2019. Billy Postlethwaite as Macbeth.
Macbeth, Chichester 2019, John Simm as Macbeth.
RUFUS NORRIS
wonder.land, national theatre 2016
RORY KINNEAR
Young Marx, Bridge Theatre 2017 (Marx)
Othello, National Theatre 2013 (Iago)
Hamlet, National Theatre, 2010 (Hamlet)
JOSHUA LACEY
Imogen (Cymbeline Renamed and Reclaimed) – Globe 2016
wonder.land by Damian Albarn, Moira Buffini, National Theatre 2016
Richard III – Trafalgar Studios, 2014
Twelfth Night, Globe 2017(Orsino)
NADIA ALBINA
Macbeth, Globe 2016 (porter)
Hecuba, RSC 2015 (Cassandra)
Othello, RSC 2015 (Duke of Venice)
Othello, Wanamaker 2017 (Bianca)
Quiz,Chichester 2017
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