Peter Viney's Blog

Macbeth
by William Shakespeare

Directed by Robert Hastie
Designed by Peter McKintosh
Composer Laura Moody

The Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe
Saturday, 8th December 2018, 14.00

CAST

Catrin Aaron – Lennox
Philip Cumbus – Banquo
Marc Elliot – Ross
Joseph Marcell – Duncan / Porter
Anna-Maria Nabirye – MacDuff
Paul Ready – Macbeth
Kirsty Rider – Lady MacDuff
Michelle Terry – Lady Macbeth
Philippine Belge – Donalblain
Kit Young – Malcolm

SINGERS/ PERCUSSION

Laura Moody, Natasha Logan, Heloise Werner

Michelle Terry as Lady Macbeth, Paul Ready as Macbeth

The Artistic Director of The Globe plays Lady Macbeth and her husband, Paul Ready plays Macbeth. As  Karen and I have written as a husband and wife team since very shortly after we met, I would say straightaway that this often means that you spend all your free time working on a creative venture, as ideas can appear at any time of day or night for discussion. So it is a positive.

On the other hand, accusations of nepotism are inevitable. It has been pointed out that up at the RSC Antony Sher was cast in a leading role (Falstaff 2014, Willie Loman  2015, King Lear 2016)  every year, and is married to the artistic director, Gregory Doran. On the other hand, Antony Sher has such a stellar reputation, that you could equally argue that the RSC was able to obtain his services (and RSC rates are not the best) precisely because of the connection.

Paul Ready is considerably lesser known than Antony Sher. Having said that, he was a marvellous creepy Angelo in Measure for Measure at The Young Vic in 2015, and a brilliant Brindsley in The Black Comedy at Chichester, so a lead role in a major production is a natural career move.

I was always told by directors that you should not have physical pre-conceptions in casting, but I don’t believe it. We have images of Macbeth as a blood-spattered warrior – Ray Fearon (last time The Globe did it) and Sean Bean had the necessary physiques. Then there was a cold blooded Stalinist dictator which Patrick Stewart did superbly at Chichester. Macbeth is a guy who has won hand to hand combats and slaughtered his enemies wholesale. Paul Ready doesn’t look muscular enough.

Lady Macbeth? Fergus Morgan’s Stage review says it … Michelle Terry has a round face and a boyish cheery grin, whatever she does. They’re qualities that make a great Blue Peter presenter or William Brown in Just William. She neither looks the siren nor the cold beauty. I want The Snow Queen.

This is the third major Macbeth this year, following the National Theatre and the RSC, and both were heavily criticized. This one has been much better received, perhaps in surprise given such a poor year at The Globe. In fact, I found the generosity of the reviews amazing.

Costumes? There aren’t any. Black skinny jeans, white shirts, black tops. Take a look. From some angles it looks as if they’ve put their underpants on top of their trousers. It fits. This year has had awful costumes at the Globe. The worst thing here is that in line with gender blind casting, there is only one female costume. Lady Macbeth’s very plain sexless white nightie at the end. Otherwise Macduff, and Lady Macduff, both played by females, have much the same costume. What with near darkness, all black costumes, no costume gender differentiation, multiple roles with a very small cast, and males played by females, only prior knowledge of the text informed me who was supposed to be who, let alone their gender in the play. I find that horribly elitist with Shakespeare. ‘Everyone knows the characters.’ No, they don’t.  The best productions should be transparent and comprehensible of themselves. Add no female hairstyles. See above for the boyish haircut. Surely The Globe with its high seat prices  in the Wanamaker can afford 14 or 15 actors rather than 10.

The 50/50 casting is beyond silly. The girlie voices of our very slight female murderers sound weedy. In spite of an excellent delivery, a female Macduff is a stupid miscasting. It’s a play about fighting men. They are brutal and nasty men.  Neither murder, that of Banquo nor Lady Macduff, had any impact or horror whatsoever. Daggers are ineffective for a major fight scene too. Yet again, it’s like being at the All Girls Grammar School 6th form play. It’s all “virtue signalling.”

The candlelight is used effectively – in general, until the second half they avoid the high candelabra which usually obscure the view from the upper gallery. However, and I have said this before at The Wanamaker, you can’t light Afro-Caribbean actors with a single candle. You simply do not see expressions, while white faces survive low light. We discovered this years ago on a video shoot, when after several embarrassed retakes, the African-American actor we were filming told us how to light him. It’s not hard. It’s certainly not racist to say it either. You just need more light.

Even the most positive reviews suggests the production drops whenever Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are not speaking. True. Casting to gender might help.

Paul Ready was the outstanding actor as well as the lead. He did a Rylance-lite with his hesitations – not as pronounced a stutter as Rylance, but a tendency to double initial words. I hadn’t noticed it before, it may just be studying how Rylance manages to get naturalness and new emphasis out of Shakespeare lines, which Ready did. He also used Rylance unexpected humour in serious bits, most of all when Macduff reveals he was not born of women in their fight and Macbeth stops and mutters wearily, ‘oh, gawd.’ Mark Rylance himself might have ventured a ‘fuck it.’ But throwing the great dramatic moment for a cheap laugh is surely iconoclastic? Why do it? (Rylance’s Iago this year was full of it.)

Ready was also crystal clear in both volume and enunciation. In fact, the total absence of difficult or unfamiliar accents, and clear delivery all round is a major virtue of the production. Paul Ready’s interpretation as a hen-pecked Macbeth worked, and he is probably the most terrified by Banquo’s ghost that I have seen. And that scene was the highlight.  While my companion thought he was also channeling Ben Wishawe physically ( and no, I wouldn’t cast Wishawe as Macbeth) I thought he was very good indeed though extremely derivative. However,  I’d also make the point that hen-pecked works for the murder of Duncan and his pages, but then Banquo, and the MacDuff family murders are at Macbeth’s initiation, NOT egged on by Lady Macbeth, and this Macbeth seems an unlikely brute for the second and third set of murders.

I agree that Ready and Terry worked especially well together. I laughed out loud with everyone at her snappy ‘Are you a man?’ Also she told him off soundly for bringing the bloody daggers out of the room, in a particular way that women reserve for husbands who pee on the toilet seat. Go and wipe the pee off seat / the blood off the daggers. So yes, the real married couple had resonance. But I still think she lacks the physical presence for the role. Trouble is they have zero sexuality. The great Lady Macbeths have frightening allure, rather than irritation at an inept hubbie. Also, I had never noticed her partial inability to pronounce R’s before.

At the start the whole cast draw lots for playing the three witches in the initial scene. I am sure that does not carry through to later in the second part when the witches are unseen child voices. With all the banging and knocking behind the galleries it was reasonably effective, but we both missed having major witches. The Globe excelled there last time around. The weird female singers worked.

It was interestingly lit, and speech clarity was excellent. It avoided the loadsamoney excesses of this year’s National Theatre and RSC productions, and while I admired stripping it to basics, a major theatre doesn’t have to double up so excessively, though that’s what they have been doing all year in 2018. More jobs for actors needed! Two very good leads, as you would expect, and they managed while looking wrong physically. Direction good. Casting direction abysmal. Costume abysmal.

Overall? Dreadful gender blind casting, and apart from the principle two actors, no one impressed us. The thing about 50/50 gender-blind casting for Shakespeare is that women actors end up doing roles they have no chance of excelling at. Macduff worked so hard and did lines so well, but any beefy competent male actor would be better for the play. One suspects an agenda. A weak cast makes the two leads look better. Is that the intention?

Why are dresses and female garb forbidden at The Globe now? In eliminating the witches, the play loses three proper female roles (or four last time The Globe did it). Then they dress Lady Macbeth, Lady Macduff and the nurse/ lady in waiting in trousers. There are boys’ parts – Fleance, Macduff’s son – which work with women actors. You could get good gender representation without casting women as burly warrior males and murderers. But they are not after 50/50 gender representation. They’re after gender blindness. Most theatres can get 50/50 representation over a season by the choice of plays. Even the RSC has probably managed it this year. You can gender-switch roles, i.e. you change a character to female NOT have a female play a male character. For example, the RSC made Bardolph a woman in Merry Wives this year, and she was obviously female, and funny. In 2016’s Globe Macbeth they had a female porter. Way back in 2012, Sebastian became female in The Tempest at the RSC in red dress and high heels, and she worked memorably as the King of Naples scheming sister.

The Globe has managed to do well with gender representation in modern plays written for its stage, like Boudica and Nell Gwynne.  However, a theatre primarily dedicated to pre-1642 repertoire, in particular Shakespeare, is the wrong place to impose such a gender-blind rather than equal representation agenda on.

We will be booking far less at The Globe next year, probably nothing at all, unless a particular director takes our eyes.  They say they’re going for the Histories in 2019. What’s the bet? Michelle Terry as the lad, Prince Hal? Who’ll play Mrs Falstaff? A young very small and thin woman maybe? Possibly deaf using sign language?  Not for us. My conclusion this year is that Michelle Terry has had a negative effect on the Globe.  She has no inkling of visual appeal nor costume. The 50/50 gender casting deeply undermines the plays of Shakespeare. Sorry. I believe those sycophantic five star reviews reveal a Virtue Signalling club.

Me? Two stars.

**

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
five star
Patrick Marmion, Daily Mail *****
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times *****
John Nathan, Metro *****
Claire Alfree, Telegraph *****

Terry has come in for criticism at the Globe for a directionless first season, partly because she opted to open with two productions that did away with the concept of a director. Admittedly, the Playhouse is a far easier space to use than the Globe itself, but Hastie provides a ringing endorsement of director-led theatre with a show so beautifully thought through that nearly every line feels new.

four star
Miriam Gillinson, Guardian ****
Dominic Maxwell, The Times ****
Rachel Halliburton, Arts Desk ****

three star
Jane Edwardes, Sunday Times ***
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard, ***

Ready speaks the verse beautifully, but doesn’t plumb the necessary depths and extremes of behaviour. Terry is crisp and distinct from the start, reading her husband’s letter aloud with gripping intent. When Ready and Terry are not on stage together, the tempo drops precipitously; too much of the acting elsewhere is uneven. The witches, selected by the drawing of tapers among the cast each night, make no impact.

Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage ***
AliceSaville, Time Out ***
Kate Kellaway, The Observer ***
Dfiza Benson, Broadway World ***

two star
Fergus Morgan, The Stage **

A tediously trad staging starring Michelle Terry and her husband Paul Ready as an unconvincing Mr and Mrs Macbeth … Terry is simply miscast as Lady Macbeth: too likeable, too cheery, too cherubic and too impish an actor to invest the part with any meaningful menace, any believable bloodlust. The duo’s decline into murderous ambition and tormented guilt can be a feverish, blood-spattered, almost sexual descent. It’s nothing of the sort here. Neither Terry nor Ready seem particularly fussed that they’ve just stabbed Joseph Marcell’s genial Duncan to death  … Don’t expect a thrilling climax, either: we don’t even get a good sword fight to finish, just some fannying around with daggers.

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

MACBETH

• Macbeth – McAvoy 2013, Trafalgar Studio, James McAvoy as Macbeth
• Macbeth, RSC 2011 Jonathan Slinger 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, Christopher Ecclestone as Macbeth
• Macbeth, National Theatre 2018, Rory Kinnear as Macbeth
• Macbeth, Watermill Theatre, 2019. Billy Postlethwaite as Macbeth
• Macbeth, Chichester 2019, John Simm as Macbeth.

MICHELLE TERRY
As You Like It, Globe 2018
Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2013
As You Like It, Globe 2015
Love’s Labour’s Lost– RSC
Love’s Labour’s Won RSC

PAUL READY
Black Comedy, Chichester 2014
Measure for Measure, Young Vic, 2015

PHILIP CUMBUS
Richard III, Trafalgar Studio 2014 (Earl of Richmond)
‘Tis Pity She’s A Whore, Wanamaker Playhouse 2014,  (Vasquez)
The Importance of Being Earnest (with David Suchet), 2015 (Algernon)
First Light, Chichester 2016 (Max Henderson)
Comus, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2016 (Henry Lawes)
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, Donmar, 2017

CATRIN AARON
As You Like It, Globe 2018