What’s „wrong“ with „Macbeth“?

I KNEW there would be chaos in my blog after this. After having seen the National Theatre’s production in the “Cinema” on June 25^th, today is the day. I actually AM in Stratford, and tonight, if my luck holds, I am going to see Christopher Eccleston as Macbeth. When we arrived here two days ago and went to the theatre “Macbeth” was on matinee, and we were sitting on the other side of the river, spying on the balconies and speculating if one of the actors that showed up there for brief moments might have been him … Of course “Macbeth” has to come first, and I am glad to have made countless notes on “authenticity”, “To be or not to be …” and, actually, “Nothing” … I already anticipate “Macbeth” to have a really long aftermath.

The National Theatre’s production already turned out extremely interesting – not actually because it was THAT good. In this case I can do without most of the detail because Claudia e-mailed me a link for a review by Michael Billington from the Guardian (Wed 7, Mar 2018) which contains an accurate description of what we BOTH had seen – though, unlike Claudia and Mr. Billington, I basically liked it.

(I am afraid I am not allowed to put in the link anymore- thanks to new copyright crap legislation! Silent protest …)

Standing in front of the underground after the show, this time we very much agreed on WHAT we had seen but basically disagreed about if we had liked it. The amazing thing for me, though, was that between the three of us (including Mr. Billington) we apparently agreed on an issue which I had identified earlier as what might be the problem with playing “Macbeth” in our day and age, and which I had called “metaphysical guilt”. As Michael Billington put it:

“I assume Norris’ intention is to show us the destructiveness of a male-dominated militarism. But this ignores the religious sanctions that haunt the text and turn Macbeth into a fallen Lucifer, conscious of trumpet-tongued angels and his own immortal soul.”

And THIS became extremely important for me: that THREE people agreed on this being such a central issue of the play that, taken out, it isn’t “Macbeth” anymore.

Nonetheless, though I agreed that the context of brutal and lawless civil war doesn’t reach far enough to cover the metaphysical (and historical) implications of Macbeth’s guilt – killing the king and upsetting the divine order of things, and taking out tragedy, again! – I kind of liked the production. Not even because Anne-Marie Duff totally seduced me as the first convincing Lady Macbeth I have seen – strong and “breakable” at the same time, and totally consistent. (About Macbeth this has still to happen, but I liked Rory Kinnear for the first time in the scene after Duncan’s murder actually being “wrecked” by guilt. (And I LIKED it how he said “The labour we delight in physics pain” because that was one of the very few moments where he actually got off just RECITING the text.) I don’t know why “they” are always trying to convince me that Macbeth is kind of a static affair. For me, what is going on with him is extremely dynamic, and there is so much in there for an actor to BRING OUT that I feel they would actually have to take their pick … I don’t want to raise my hopes too high but, of course, if Chris Eccleston does it tonight he will be my hero …)

The main reason why I enjoyed the play was that I had always felt that the extreme violence is a distinctive feature that has to get in in some way. And I must admit that my solution of large amounts of blood on the stage would not just be inconvenient but probably not as effective as I would wish – considering the level of splatter and slaughter on display in other media. I just felt that “Macbeth” has to stand out in some way – even from other Shakespeare plays. In this respect the “brutal consistency” of cultural background, set, sound, and not respecting the text too much worked extremely well. Especially the way they turned the huge space into an advantage, having a really big world at their disposal for displaying external violence and cunningly alternating it with small, cramped spaces for intimate scenes between the main protagonists. And I liked it how most of the supporting actors achieved to give their characters a life and a predicament of their own, partly filling the “psychological” emptiness created by Rory Kinnear’s Macbeth and the lack of genuine communication between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. Especially Patrick O’Kane who appropriated so much stage time digging really deep into the inner conflict of Macduff and the repercussions of what happens to him I was gawping … (Though I will always want to see Graham MacTavish as Macduff he probably couldn’t have done better.)

But the greatest thing about this production for me is still how it brought out the point in “Macbeth” BY MISSING IT. I think I rather nailed it already having my first “stab” at tragedy and metaphysical guilt and – when I am thinking about it – we were already in this together. It was Claudia who triggered the concept in me by insisting on Prospero’s guilt and tragic failure as a ruler whereas I was still looking for personal guilt, which isn’t such a big thing in this case to actually explain why he is feeling so guilty.

Where, I think, I fundamentally disagree with the two others is that somehow getting back to the metaphysical and historical context of a past age would be the cure. At the moment I am rather big on UPDATES, and I think that ANY Shakespeare play needs to be “seriously” updated on a contemporary stage, with contemporary actors for a contemporary audience to make it work at all. That between the three of us who are now in Stratford to see the play NONE has ever seen a production that was at least marginally satisfying is telling. Although most of what is going on in “Macbeth” appears to be so obvious it is a real bugger when it comes to playing it today, maybe for various reasons. But, having seen the National Theatre’s production, I became even more convinced that one of the main reasons is the problem “we” have today with metaphysical guilt. In one of my former posts I described how cunningly Arthur Miller, in my opinion, used tragedy and metaphysical guilt in “The Crucible” in his update of a true story from the 17^th century, preserving tragedy in a MEANINGFUL way, because he was convinced that it is still “state of the art” for telling this kind of story. I will always remember how AUTHENTIC the 2014’s update turned out, and how thrilled I was about Richard Armitage being so pleased with his part in the updating. How much he liked to imagine, and process, that he actually MIGHT be this person – and I think THIS is the key to understanding why tragedy, and a play like “Macbeth”, still “gets” us: that - even though we usually don’t manage - we really WANT to be a GOOD person, with the right attitude and the stamina to live up to it. And this wish lives in us independent of the fact that we might have successfully eliminated all metaphysical issues from our lives. Arthur Miller found a solution for this dilemma which obviously still works whereas, for “Macbeth”, there is this challenge for every individual production of finding their own. Now I’ll just wait and see what the RSC will do about it …