“It COULD have been me …”

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”.