The Tragedy of Macbeth

by William Shakespeare

seen at the Almeida Theatre on 7 October 2021

Yaël Farber directs James McArdle in the title role and Saoirse Ronan as Lady Macbeth in a compelling production of one of Shakespeare's more difficult plays to stage. The potent brew of notorious witches, prophecies that come true because they are known about, and others that come true with cruel twists, combined with violent action and unsympathetic protagonists all too often leads to overblown or unbalanced results on stage. Here at the Almeida the pitfalls are avoided, and the director has made some interesting adjustments to the text to create a stark vision of inexorable catastrophe.

What to do with the language? The Scottish court spoke with Scottish accents: only the witches, Lady Macduff and the children did not. This worked surprisingly well once the ear had adjusted to it; Shakespearean cadences resonate just as easily in these voices as in 'received pronunciation'.

What to do with the witches? The presumed mindset of the original audience is no longer available to us, and indeed these witches in particular with their incantatory rhymes have become so stereotypical that they can seem like a joke. Farber has renamed them 'Wyrd Sisters' (having noticed that they are named 'Weird Sisters' in the folio cast list), and the programme notes draw attention to the many manifestations of three women guarding, creating or spinning Fate (Anglo-Saxon 'wyrd') in European myths. Thus there are no old crones cackling over a disgusting cauldron. Instead three enigmatic women, almost serene in their dispassionate presence, may be seen not only when they appear to Macbeth and Banquo, and later to Macbeth alone; they are also visible as silent observers of the outworking of Fate at many other moments during the play - possibly at all moments, though there is a good deal of mist billowing about which makes the back wall of the stage invisible at times.

What to do with the violent action? Macbeth is a bloody play, with unpleasant murders both off and on stage. There were two perspex screens often moved about the stage demarcating inner and outer spaces (part of a brilliant set design by Soutra Gilmour). A director might easily have splashed them copiously with blood starting with the execution of the rebel Thane of Cawdor near the beginning of the play; the murder of Duncan might even have been mimed behind a screen with further opportunity for spraying blood. In this production matters were more restrained, and all the more disquieting for that. At the opening tableau the whole cast gathered on stage to a persistent thrum of a low musical note above which a single cello line wavered. An attendant woman brought on a wheelbarrow full of boots and upended it, then carefully placed them at the front of the stage. A soldier washed himself from a bucket, but what he daubed over himself was blood, since a blood-soaked messenger brings the news of victory to Duncan. Similarly, bloodstains were always restricted only to the bodies of actors - either Macbeth and Lady Macbeth after the murder of Duncan, or Banquo when he appears as a ghost - and not used at all elsewhere, even during the on-stage murders. This made the deaths of Lady Macduff  and her two sons all the more chilling, especially as one child was dragged screaming from a hiding place and the lady herself was ultimately dispatched in a tub of water.

What to do with the disintegration of Lady Macbeth towards the end of the play? Lady Macbeth is a driving force in the first half of the play, but increasingly cut off from her husband's plans and inner torment once he has become king. Then, at the end, there is the famous sleepwalking scene, with little to prepare us for it. Farber has created a daring visualisation of  the trauma precipitating this downfall. She has Lady Macbeth bring the advice to Lady Macduff that she should flee with her children, and then still be present to witness the murders. It is preposterous on a realistic level, but psychologically extremely acute, and Saoirse Ronan utterly convinces in showing the trembling panic of an unwilling witnes to such babarity. Naked ambition in the abstract, so forcefully embraced by this woman at the beginning of this play, here confronts the horror of its consequences on real lives, and the strain is too much: a brilliant stroke.

What to do about Macbeth? Make him passionate, ambitious, uncertain about murder at the beginning but plausibly easy with the idea as his obsessions take control, completely unaware of the irony (and foolishness) in his determination to connive at the fulfilment of prophecy when it is to his advantage but to attempt to outwit it when it is detrimental. Make the famous lines of despair at the news of his wife's death deply felt, not just cynical world-weariness. Give the part to James McArdle who conveys initial doubts over murdering Duncan, horror at the deed, abject terror at the appearance of Banquo's ghost and steely resolve to fight to the last, with equal skill and authority.

What do do about the Porter defusing the tension of the murder scene with long disquisitions about equivocation, a subject of no interest to a modern audience? Dispense with him completely, along with the more lurid witches' hocus pocus. In fact a number of other scenes were streamlined or omitted, making for sharper emphasis and an unremitting atmosphere of tension. I am not sure, but I think I even missed the explicit instruction for soldiers to disguise their numbers by cutting branches from the trees at Burnham Wood (a vital point in destabilising Macbeth's self-assurance, which was cunningly foreshadowed by the procession of Banquo's heirs presented to an anguished Macbeh during his final encounter with the Wyrd Sisters). There was no evocation of the holy stability of the English realm under Edward the Confessor to contrast with the dire state of Scotland or the peculiar defensiveness of prince Malcolm when Macduff confronts him. 

There was no final speech by the new king after the death of the tyrant Macbeth. Instead, the surviving cast gathered again in almost the same positions as at the beginning; the wheelbarrow of boots appeaed, and one of the three Wyrd Sisters pronouned once more the opening question: 'When shall we three meet again?'. Malcolm was in the spotlight rather than Duncan, but Fate, evidently, is cyclical.