When I
started to “really read” “Macbeth”, after having seen the play in Stratford, I
already knew that there would be a long aftermath. As usual, I couldn’t have
imagined HOW long. One of the reasons for this was that I retrieved the history
I had with the play and which, for the most part, I hadn’t been aware of.
Before this, I would have said: ‘It is my favourite play, always has been, but
I don’t know why. I memorize one bit of it every day though I will never be
able to learn the text completely. And I have never seen a production that I
found entirely convincing.” That was it. But, of course, it was not.
As I
realized on behalf of my “Merchant of Venice” marathon there is a lot of
“Shakespeare” stored in my memory in the mode of “not reading”, and, when I
know that I will see a play, I usually start the updating process by “just
reading”, to upload the complete content. Somewhere on the way there, usually
before I see the play, I begin to “really read” it, that is, to form a
conception of what the play means FOR ME. Sometimes not before I see it on the
stage, though, as with “The Tempest”. In the case of “Macbeth” I came to
remember the exact moment I began to “really read”. The statement by Richard
Armitage about the dynamics unfolding as a result of the killing jump-started
the process and explained to me why I find the play so fascinating. It is the
irreversibility of the process that follows the single false step somebody has
taken, the INEVITABILITY of what follows. And “Macbeth”, where the metaphysical
guilt is so obvious, is the “purest” example of this tragic pattern I know. As
I love it to strike intertextual relationships myself I understood intuitively
how it could be used to detect and EMPHASIZE the tragic core of Thorin’s story.
It was a story I was deeply involved with at the time, just being in the middle
of writing my own version. And, in turn, I used this to update “Macbeth”. From
this moment I began to memorize the text – and to wish that a great method
actor would play it. So, my expectations were more precise and “reasonable”
than I thought, and – even though I did not dare to HOPE – I knew that
SOMETHING would happen when Christopher Eccleston would undertake it. The
frustrating experience that NOTHING happened when Rory Kinnear played it – even
though certain expectations about the updating of the play were met – was
revealing. Where “Shakespeare” is concerned I NEED somebody to update it for me
– as it should be because “Shakespeare” happens on the stage. In this case, the
“vortex movement” that causes these dynamics originates IN the main character,
not, mostly, in between characters. I think that this is one of the chief
attractions of the play as well as its fatal flaw. The reason why “Macbeth”
usually “goes wrong”. If nothing happens THERE, nothing WILL happen. The play
will never work for me.
Even
though – as it turned out – I basically expected the right thing I still had it
wrong. I think I imagined Christopher Eccleston to kind of “flesh out” the
character for me, make me understand him better. Instead I discovered that I
had been right about this before: There is nothing to UNDERSTAND. Or rather:
what I will ever understand about Macbeth I understood already. It had been
there all along. All these finer points about Macbeth being “fantastic at his
job” and insecure about his masculinity: I couldn’t have said it better - but I
could have said it. They are all really important, of course, for the actor to
strike a connection with the character, make him feel like a real person. Again
the foregoing experience about Rory Kinnear playing him where I definitely
MISSED Macbeth and the contrast with Christopher Eccleston who came on the
stage AS Macbeth proves the point. No method actor could ever work without
striking this genuine connection with the “human stuff” inside HIMSELF. It is
the beautiful part of their work, I suppose, and it is beautiful to see, but it
is not yet the point – and the “secret” – of what great method actors like him
are doing. The thing that “mere mortals” will never comprehend. My closest
guess so far: It is the art of knowing exactly HOW to hit the point and to get
this RESPONSE out of us.
This was
the moment in my reading where I remembered my FIRST encounter with Christopher
Eccleston which wasn’t in “Doctor Who” but – ages in the past for me! – in
“Elizabeth” (with Cate Blanchett) where he played the Duke of Norfolk. (A
rather sinister character whom I have come to like because THREE of my many
favourites have played him: Christopher Eccleston, Mark Strong (in “Henry VIII”
with Ray Winstone) and Bernard Hill in “Wolf Hall”.) This first encounter was
of a questionable nature, but I like to write about it because it amuses me. It
must have been something like when I watched the film again, after “Doctor
Who”, and something happened that has never happened before, and probably will
never happen again: He made me have an orgasm in a sex scene. It was entirely
spontaneous, without any touching or conscious “foreplay”, as I definitely
didn’t find him attractive as Norfolk – not in these breeches, and not even
after he took them off (- too skinny!) And it was definitely played – not, kind
of, “done for real”! It still amuses me – and amazes me! – that he COULDN’T
miss the point in a sex scene!!! Well, one might think that it is kind of
difficult to miss the point in a sex scene but, in my experience, it is what
usually happens (- except in French films where there definitely is a different
“culture” of naturalistic acting, which I usually don’t like – outside of sex
scenes …) And I don’t know if I am right, but I imagine that there usually is a
lack of motivation I can understand, lying naked with a camera pointing at your
arse, and probably conscious that the person you are usually doing it with will
be watching … At least I would think - and understand! - that there must be
SOME limit to method acting – as there certainly is! But with great method
actors we can never tell. Dreaming the dreams of another person certainly
doesn’t happen “just like that” but, I suppose, is part of a “technique” how to
wake up as this person already, getting entirely used to being them.
Absurd
as this may be, it was the orgasm that made me understand WHY I have been in
awe of Christopher Eccleston since I first saw him in “Elizabeth”. It was this
feeling that he – potentially – would stop at nothing short of the “real
thing”. And the real thing, in his case, is to get this RESPONSE out of us. In
“Macbeth” I remember exactly WHEN this happened. Not the precise moment in the
text – pity! – but the moment I noticed THE CHANGE. It was when I perceived him
kind of peering down his nose, looking SO ARROGANT!
I have
always felt that what happens in “Macbeth” is about this change. This change which
we know happens all the time but is so difficult for us to understand. The
tragic downfall, or “solitary journey into depravity” – whatever our personal
update – of somebody we like. I just remembered that my best “Macbeth Retold”
before the real one with James McAvoy - way in the past when I tried to learn
Norwegian - was a TV series called “Svarte Penger” (“dirty money”) where a young
and very handsome policeman is slowly turning into a criminal because of the
ONE false decision he has taken. It is really fascinating to watch this
downward spiral, but “we” never acknowledge the change. We refuse to see it –
or cannot see it! – because we still see the same person and cannot bring
ourselves to “abandon” him – even after he has killed! - hoping until the end
that it will turn out well!!!
So, the
crucial question about playing Macbeth is, in my opinion: How can this CHANGE
be brought on the stage so that “we” will take it in? The reason why I am so
(unreasonably) fond of Simon Russell Beale is what he did in “Lear” and “The
Tempest”. It was kind of like: ‘I know this stuff, you know this stuff, why
bother’ - and he walked straight to the point and did his thing in a way that
“we” would notice and respond to it. It is a questionable attitude, of course,
but I got more out of it than I would have got out of half an hour of beautiful
ranting. (He STILL is a great method actor, and still does great method acting,
as recently in “The Death of Stalin”, so it is not THAT unreasonable.) In
“Macbeth”, in my experience, the point is usually not addressed at all, or they
are trying to show Macbeth AS CHANGED by making him either mad, or
pathologically scared, or cruel. I was always dissatisfied with this, but
didn’t know why, until Christopher Eccleston showed me. The point about Macbeth
is that he is NOT SPECIAL in any way but that he is LIKE US – or rather as we
would WANT to be: Attractive, fit, “fantastic at (our) job”, hugely confident
and universally liked, but, somehow, we never really get what we are owed. Even
if we are already Thane of Cawdor, or head of our department, or undersecretary
of something – or are playing the lead in “Doctor Who” - there HAS to be
something better still. Careers are careers because they are going upwards –
otherwise it is just work. (I am constantly glad that I like work!) But, at one
point on the way upwards, something happens that inevitably WILL happen.
Claudia gave me the crucial hint for my update. I believe Macbeth when he says
that he has “bought golden opinions from all sorts of people”, but, according
to Claudia, he MISJUDGES his credit. What happens is something nobody can understand
when it happens to THEM. CONFIDENT people – like us! - always like confident
people. The others they don’t even see. But we cease to like them as soon as
they have got what WE wanted and have become ARROGANT.
In my
opinion, Christopher Eccleston – consciously or intuitively – made the change
about this FINE LINE between confidence and arrogance – which is the likeliest
place for us to FEEL IT. The mix-up I made about him being arrogant “as an
actor” is certainly collateral but also an interesting experience about method
acting. Basically, I can just talk about what I saw – there is no way for me to
tell what is behind it. And if he actually had a say in the matter of Macbeth’s
death then because he would get it exactly right. He made Macbeth appear as
defiant as I always felt he was – unable to give in until the end – and as
arrogant as he never appeared to me before. But this is what is required here:
FOR ME to perceive him as arrogant and be able to take a step back and see what
really happens. Unfortunately, the buckets of blood he causes to be shed, and
the fear and the heartbreak, won’t do it! We’ll just look away because we have
seen this time and time again. We need to feel the change FOR REAL – within
ourselves.
So, this
was how “Macbeth” finally happened for me. (Deep breath!)
That is,
were it BEGAN for me because, after I had been taken by the hand and shown the
way, the updating process started to run amok. It wasn’t possible to take notes
of everything that happened. Just one example: I found the word “EQUIVOCATION”
somewhere in my notes, which is a concept that, as I noticed earlier,
Shakespeare has “hidden” over and over again in different ways and forms in the
text: “Fair is foul and foul is fair”, “so from the spring whence comfort seemed
to come, discomfort swells …”, or, rather consciously, and twice, in the porter
scene: “… here is an equivocator that could swear against both the scales in
either scale“ and: “much drink may be said to be an equivocator with lechery,
it makes him and it mars him …”. Then, close to the end he begins to “doubt the
equivocation of the fiend that lies like truth” (“doubt” as in “suspect”!). I
was fascinated by this common figure of thinking behind these different
experiences. The hidden insight that nothing exists or is going to happen
without its opposite already being present. But this was all rather theoretical,
nothing substantial came of it as to what it means in “Macbeth”. Now, with the
“vortex” starting to work, all kinds of connections were suddenly established.
Shakespeare’s fascination with equivocation is not mainly about the
philosophical “beauty” of it. It is about “our” experience that it is one of
these laws which rule our lives, and which we suspect are there but cannot
really point a finger at. In everything that we attempt or anticipate there is
already this contrary force at work that will trip us up eventually – be it
TIME, or cancer, or the public opinion turning against us … Like Macbeth we are
turning a blind eye – or actually are blind to it. How should we ever do
anything, or believe anything, with this knowledge hanging over our heads? My
personal solution – or delusion? – about this problem is not to give up hope
but try and hope for the RIGHT thing. It appears to have worked so far, but I
cannot see what it might have been for Macbeth. (Probably to be content with
Thane of Cawdor and try for children instead …??? I am not convinced …) In the
end, he consciously acknowledges the equivocation. I think this is why we can
still “keep him on” as a tragic hero, not somebody we voluntarily cast off
because he is worthless and stupid. At some point, he comes to consciously
accept his “fate” – not as this heroic act but just because he sees that he has
finally run out of choices. It might be controversial, but I think that kind of
committing suicide by giving Macduff his sword is a good expression of the
conclusions he reached earlier.
The
headline for my reading of the RSC’s “Macbeth” I took from one of my favourite
soundtracks from one of my favourite comedies: “The Life Aquatic by Steve
Zissou”. It is part of a song about someone who witnesses something terrible
happening to another person – like a fatal accident, I don’t remember … - goes
back to his hotel room and lies down, and then this thought strikes him with sudden
force: “IT COULD HAVE BEEN ME!” I picked this quote – unconsciously, by the
way! – because I think it is what we usually never acknowledge, and what
TRAGEDY is about.
Half an
hour ago, listening to my radio, I heard about another “tragedy” happening
where sixteen people were burned – somewhere on a beach? I don’t know where, I
don’t really listen, but I notice this inflation of “tragedy” on the media. And
– sorry to say this! – sixteen people having been burned is NOT a tragedy – nor
hundreds of people being drowned in the Mediterranean, by the way, even though
this is horrible and outrageous, and won’t get any less outrageous when it happens
for the hundredth time. But it will never be a tragedy because “tragedy” is the
wrong category. It is not about the content of a “story” but about the FORM of
storytelling. To call an event a “tragedy” as such is absurd, but makes sense
as some kind of metaphor for the person telling the story to express their
feelings about the event. Though, used in this inflationary way, it doesn’t really
MEAN anything anymore.
Now - as
I probably wrote a few times already - for me “Macbeth” is the purest example
of a “modern” tragedy – as opposed to antique tragedy. As I inferred as well –
investigating all these productions of the play and films about it – it is a
textbook example WHY tragedy doesn’t work anymore. It doesn’t because, for
having this singular “tragic” experience, we need some kind of metaphysical connection,
some kind of belief in something “above us”, to determine irreversible guilt. After
having seen what I think I will ever see in “Macbeth”, I came to the
preliminary conclusion that this probably REALLY doesn’t work anymore because
“we” are not interested in metaphysical guilt any longer. So, no production
emphasizing the religious/metaphysical implications will find favour with the
audience. Nonetheless I haven’t given up on tragedy as this kind of FORMULA to
make stories work in a certain way. As “gold standard” to, somehow, create this urgency and sense of inevitability that will lift the content above everyday experience.
Of course, as I am fonder of “Macbeth” now than I have ever been, I HAVE to think
this. And as the play IS this textbook tragedy it will not work with the
tragedy taken out.
This
means that the dilemma has to be dealt with in some way if we want “Macbeth” to
succeed on the stage. And - as I have seen it succeed - I suppose that the
evident solution is to find some kind of “crutch”, or – not so negative perhaps!
– replacement for tragedy. Something that can stand in for metaphysical guilt.
Ultimately, tragedy is just some kind of cultural technique for us to be able
to confront what we CANNOT accept about our lives, to make us LOOK instead of
looking away. I think this is what Greek tragedy was all about – though we
cannot READ the formula anymore. Somehow to make the INACCEPTABLE will of the Gods
acceptable even though we will never understand it. Obviously, VIOLENCE doesn’t
do the trick. It was very convincing in the National Theatre’s production
because they really achieved to jar our nerves with the psychological intensity
of the murder scenes. But it doesn’t really trigger something “in us” because
it doesn’t reach to where the “vortex” is supposed to be.
So
violence didn’t do it, but, for me, TIME did. I just need this feeling of
something inexorable OUTSIDE ME which would make me LOOK instead of looking
away because it is interesting or exciting. It can provide this urgency as a
state of affairs within which Christopher Eccleston could work and make Macbeth
happen in a way that we would come to ask: What would I do if it was ME? - In
former times they had the Gods, or the Three Fates, or the wheel of fortune, to
explain the outrageous things that happen to us and which we try not to
acknowledge or, if this isn’t possible, desperately try to deal with. Today we
have TIME and CHANGE. Even though we cannot accept them, or change them - try
as we might! - we can SPEAK about them, which makes a big difference! I assume
that this is at the bottom of my ongoing fascination with tragedy and
“Macbeth”.