A wonderful evening of theatre from the GSC, with all the horror, magic and drama of this iconic Shakespearean tragedy. Janice Dempsey reviews.
OUR VERDICT
The GSC’s collaboration with talented director Charlotte Conquest has again created a production full of stunning visual and aural effects.
The story of a morally weak man deluded into murderous and finally self-destructive ways by his ambitions (and dark powers that pander to them) evokes echoes down the centuries to our own times. Lies, ambiguous prophecies and revenge are familiar ingredients of political life in every era. It’s worth noting that James I of England (James VI of Scotland) was descended from Scottish royalty – this play is a piece of propaganda in Shakespeare’s own political world.
Here Shakespeare’s opening scene on the “blasted heath” is a terrifying battlefield in Scotland. A group of innocent children are slaughtered, to rise from the dead and haunt Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, one of the leaders whose battles have destroyed their lives.
They become Shakespeare’s ‘Three Witches’, part zombies, part evil spirits. Their mission is to channel Macbeth’s ambition and lust for power so that he loses his best friends, his honour, his beloved (and equally ambitious) wife, his reputation, his reason and at last his own life.
They use the classic method of the scammer: appearing to predict two pieces of good fortune (though one is simply the fact of Macbeth’s present title and the other the outcome of a battle), they convince Macbeth that he is prophesied to become King of Scotland after Duncan, his friend and just and beloved ruler.
Matt Pereira Photography +44(0)7
When Duncan's son Malcolm is named as his successor to the throne, the Thane and Lady Macbeth decide that they must make the witches' prophecy come true for themselves. Their next step must be to kill Duncan as he sleeps as a guest in their castle. Unused to the realities of killing, Lady Macbeth becomes mad with guilt and their marriage falters and breaks.
Macbeth, used to viciously killing on the battlefield but not to regicide or cold-bloodedly murdering friends, murders, again and again, to avoid suspicion until overcome with the enormity of his crimes, he also becomes delusional with guilt, haunted by visions of blood and the faces of his victims.
The King’s sons have fled to escape Macbeth. Malcolm, the rightful successor to the throne, returns with an English army to claim his right as King of Scotland.
The spirits’ predictions are proved correct – Macbeth’s sons do not inherit the throne, even though he has been King while Malcolm is away in England. Now all-powerful and a hated tyrant, he’s destroyed at last by Macduff in revenge for the killing of his family.
The witches/spirits /zombies are an inspired interpretation of the supernatural elements in Shakespeare’s play. They emerge at moments of stress, with piercing screams and sinister hissings, to distort Macbeth’s sense of reality and inject a sense of modern horror into the evil that’s overtaking him.
Eric MacLennan as the Porter is wonderfully down-to-earth and comfortably plays to the groundlings when he appears to relieve himself at the side of the stage.
Most of the groundlings on the night I was there were school students studying the play for GCSE (it was only his finger, but it lessened the tension for a moment!) The passionate kisses between Macbeth and his wife caused even more of a sensation among them!
Jack Whitam was more effective as the reasonable Thane of Glamis than as the vicious tyrant that Macbeth becomes; the character’s downfall tended to make him appear more petulant than tyrannical.
There were powerful performances from Nathan Ives-Mobe as Macduff and Stella Taylor as Lady Macbeth.
I admired the simultaneous staging of linked scenes. The murder of Macduff’s family shared the stage with his requests from exile for news of them, and Banquo’s murder melded with Macbeth’s celebratory coronation feast were memorable examples.
This is a dark and challenging play, with a strong moral and political ethos and dialogue that abounds in ‘equivocation’ (ambiguous meanings.)
The GSC has, as always, met its challenges with an atmospheric, well-paced, inventively staged production.
Holy Trinity Church, Guildford from 8th – 29th February 2020.
