Instruments of darkness

 

The spoils of London are but slowly emerging – which I love! So, “Dexter” and the psychopaths get delayed again in favour of Shakespeare. After we had seen the basically boring “Macbeth” at DocX with Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma, Claudia and I had a substantial chat over fish & chips and London Pride amber ale about what always goes wrong with this play and why we always think they would have done so much better with us as directors … The next day we saw what now is my THIRD amazing “Othello” at the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse and started wondering again: Maybe this play really IS cursed? … over which I slept, and the next morning, on the Elizabeth Line to Heathrow, I realized that I had the answer.

 

(Which I wouldn’t have, by the way, without my previous excursion into “real life” described in my last post! Have I mentioned that “Patience” is my second name, and that I am fond of long delays? Maybe not for some time …)

 

“Boring”, by the way, only when Indira Varma was not on stage – best Lady Macbeth I’ve ever seen, as I knew she would be. (Like I knew Christopher Eccleston would be the best Macbeth I’d probably ever see; I don’t dare to imagine what might have happened with the two of them on the same stage … most likely so much less than I could imagine, not with the other “bits” missing. But of the Macbeths later. It turned out as a good idea to approach the play from a different angle.

 

This started some time ago last summer at the Café Münchner Freiheit, and it started with the “weird sisters”. Now that I can see where it has led, I am amazed. I mean, I began to revisit “Macbeth” – my favourite play of all times, if I had to decide! - in 2015 or 2016, if I remember this correctly, and began to learn the text, initially with the objective of creating my own ideal production of the play in my head, which I gradually forgot about. As I had learned it by heart, I had this feeling that I totally understood the text, being aware at the same time that there was little I did understand. But I never felt compelled to do anything about it, apart from the short interval when we went to Stratford to see the Christopher Eccleston “Macbeth”. I obviously had the feeling that somebody would “resolve” this for me – a state of delusion from which I miraculously surfaced some time BEFORE we went to see Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma in London. And this might just be the beginning – in theatre terms – as we are getting another chance to see David Tennant as Macbeth this Fall because this very successful – and probably interesting – production we sadly had to skip will be given another go. Come virus, war or industrial action – if we can make it, we’ll be there!

 

Of course this is not an indication of anything because there is always a “Macbeth” on in London, but sometimes there are these “clusters”, and I can’t help feeling that I have become a part of one. Given this sudden break-through, the time might just not have been RIGHT for “Macbeth”? I had been pleased to see the RSC perform the play the way I UNDERSTOOD IT – being fully aware that I didn’t have a clue! I haven’t ditched what I thought I understood, it is just only a tiny fraction of something so much bigger, and everything else has been held in limbo. Now – that is, last summer – I began the painstaking effort of looking into every tiny detail, every obscure word, every metaphor, every historical angle – and thus to become fully aware that what I understood so far is just the tip of the iceberg. I didn’t finish the work and might not, due to lack of time, but recently have begun to reap the benefit. I wouldn’t have, though, had I not somehow become part of one of these inexplicable “adoption clusters” – where some people who matter have this feeling it might be a good time for a “new one”. As I said, it might just be chance, but, on my departure from London, I got this sudden, very strong feeling that – at this moment in my life AND in history – the time has come once more for “Macbeth”. And – I just love these moments when “Shakespeare” makes me realize how naïve I have been! – that this isn’t exactly good news.

 

On the lazy, sunny afternoon at the café I was still very far from this point – to tell the truth: “Macbeth” was the last thing on my mind! - but we had decided to see the play in February and felt compelled to do a bit of brain storming. The only thing I remember about it now is the initial question:

 

WHO ARE THE “WEIRD SISTERS”, AND WHAT DO THEY WANT?

 

It came from the Shakespeare chat group that Claudia follows, and I remember thinking that it was probably a stupid question, but this was condescension. My own hypothetical production of “Macbeth” had actually started with a visualization of the sisters. In my opinion, they had to be anarchic, destructive, a decisive aesthetic factor in the production, and, first and foremost, GREAT FUN. I had therefore been invariably disappointed by how boring and nondescript they turned out in every single production I saw and by the lack of a concept, or at least one I could SEE. At the DocX, they were supposed to be refugees of war, but to get this you had to read the programme and still answer the question: What has this to do with anything?

 

At this point I realize that I am still brainstorming – in fact, my brain is suffering some sort of explosion, and I have to set down the fallout immediately before it disappears … Maybe it is exactly the point of the three sisters that they are so nondescript, or rather that their description is so contradictory that they could in fact be anything – or nothing! - so that everybody could make of them what they want. (“What are these, so withered and so wild in their attire that look not like the inhabitants of the earth and yet are on it …”) Of course it is disappointing that people usually make so little of them, but we shouldn’t know WHAT to make of them because this links them to the overall theme of EQUIVOCATION that I had set down as one of the key issues I didn’t yet understand. I have more of an idea now, but the issue is still growing. “Fair is foul, and foul is fair” – a lot in “Macbeth” is not what it appears to be – or is supposed to be - but isn’t it US who are still not getting something? Clearly Shakespeare meant to insinuate a structure of reality that is FUNDAMENTALLY disturbing. There will be a little more about the weird sisters - probably a great deal more - but I realize now that at the bottom of my fascination with them was a premonition that they might be exactly at the CENTRE of the play = where we DON’T look! That it might not just be ME but “US” who haven’t understood yet, and that RIGHT NOW it might be slowly dawning on us …

 

There are a few things they got right in said production – apart from casting Indira Varma as Lady Macbeth. (That I will say NOTHING AT ALL about Ralph Fiennes whom I am usually so fond of as an actor says everything!) One of them was the “weird sisters” – at least marginally. It didn’t really work, though, but I think they meant for them to be actually DOING something. This is one of the few things which are unambiguously obvious about the sisters: that they are meant to be doing something, not just standing there – or creeping about on the stage, it doesn’t really matter which! – looking pretty – respectively, weird! - and speaking these alluringly nonsensical lines. As Claudia astutely remarked, they are meant to be “INSTRUMENTS of darkness”. (Sometimes, just sometimes, all you need is to know the text!) Which struck me as a good answer to the first part of our initial question: WHO ARE THE WEIRD SISTERS? And with just one further step it resolves the second part as well: WHAT DO THEY WANT?

 

I realize that it wasn’t just condescension to think of them as stupid questions because I could think of a hundred stupid – or rather immaterial – ANSWERS to them, one of which would have been my own. I will look into the “weird sisters” historically in due time because it is interesting and helped me get to what now might seem like a flash of inspiration, but the brunt of the matter is that the weird sisters could be anything, as long as they are instruments of darkness on top of it = INSTRUMENTAL in the production of the DARKNESS that features so often and so prominently in this play. As much as the “physical matter” is predominantly blood, (so predominantly that I favour productions with a lot of blood on the stage, another thing they did right at the DocX), the “spiritual matter” is darkness - which I haven’t really noticed because I have been looking elsewhere. (Blood is red because this makes us pay attention to it!)

 

The second part of the question is in fact kind of silly, but nonetheless important. Of course, the weird sisters don’t WANT anything – as in having an ultimate objective - because they could be anybody, or nobody, and their personal motives are in fact immaterial. Their raison d’être is to wreak havoc and make sure that darkness prevails. They are the likes of Loki, and no wonder that I kind of like them!? (I am just back from watching “Miller’s Girl” – film of the year already! - and am thinking that as long as you haven’t answered the question of how to be dangerous, life isn’t worth living …) So, I was right to think these were silly questions – though I was wrong to think they needn’t be answered. It turns out that the issue isn’t really the weird sisters, it’s the DARKNESS.