Review: Macbeth, Shakespeare’s Globe

Full disclosure: I am currently employed by Shakespeare’s Globe, although am not involved in any of the productions. Please read my thoughts on this in my introductory blog post.

Confession time: as I had the chance to see this production on opening night, I began drafting my thoughts for this review. Nothing concrete, as I knew I would be going on press night as well, but I figured that I might as well begin articulating some of my responses to the production. It couldn’t change that much surely? Right? Wrong. Never has the case for blog reviewers respecting the preview period been made so evident to me as in this production. From an opening night that was “weighed down by the sheer mass of fabric so that the action drags along” (yup, that’s one of my original jottings), the performance last night had developed significantly in less than a week. Not that it was without problems, but we shall come to those in a minute.

Katrina Lindsay’s design sees the Globe reimagined as the circles of Hell. A black membrane extends out over most of the yard with slits for the disembodied heads of groundlings to poke through, a visual nod (pun perhaps intended) to the frozen lake of Cocytus in Dante’s Inferno. Discordant bagpipes fill the air with Orlando Gough’s music, and a didgeridoo and muted trombone fill out the score nicely. This is the domain of the play’s witches, a terrifying trio whose custodianship of this Hell is underlined by having them wear the tatters of the standard Globe stewards’ tabards. For director Lucy Bailey, it is clear that the witches are central to her hellish vision, and they appear with greater frequency throughout the play to drag the dead into the underworld.

And what a lot of bodies there are to drag. This production is the antithesis of Cheek By Jowl’s austere production at the Barbican earlier this year. Where that was purged of gore, this is a production that is steeped in blood. Every single corpse that is mentioned in the script, even if killed offstage, appears: the treacherous Cawdor; Duncan; his scapegoat chamberlains; Banquo; and the Macduff family, now expanded to include a daughter, nanny and serving boy; and Macbeth and his wife. By the end you are somewhat deadened to all this, but then, one wonders if that’s the entire point?

With Elliot Cowan and Laura Rogers, Bailey has cast her Macbeths as young, sexy and energetic. Their relationship is passionate, violent even, tearing the clothes off one another when he returns from war. Initially, Rogers, something of an old hand at the Globe, seemed less confident in her move from the arboreal comedies of As You Like and A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the dark world inhabited by Lady Macbeth. It was only on a second viewing that I realised her performance is heartbreakingly subtle, almost too subtle for the Globe stage. Gone is the typical “fiend-like queen”, handsome, dominating and shrieking like a banshee. In its place is an understated interpretation of a febrile woman, abandoned for long periods by her soldier husband, broken by the loss of their child, and perhaps, just a little more naïve in life and love than we tend to assume. Her motivation for the murders seems an attempt to restore something to her relationship with Macbeth, with no awareness that his legally sanctioned murders on the battlefield do not equate with regicide. She uses her sexuality as the only weapon available to her, she can barely convince herself to return the bloody daggers to Duncan’s chamber, and her handwashing begins early at the banquet scene, before culminating in a sleepwalking scene that is sublime.

Elliot Cowan is the most vigorously handsome Macbeth you are ever likely to see. At his physical peak (and exploited to the full by Bailey with regular toplessness – no objections from me), his attractiveness seduces the audience into feeling that he might look rather good as king. However, I wonder to what extent Bailey’s hell concept undermined the drama of this role. Shakespeare’s play moves away from a Catholic theology that envisaged hell as a terrifying real and physically torturous collective experience, and towards an internalised Protestant doctrine that reinvented eternal damnation as individual psychological anguish. Bailey’s vision of a literal Hell therefore works at cross-purposes to the text. If Hell is real, and the witches are indeed agents of Satan, then the question of Macbeth’s guilt, and even his agency, becomes somewhat moot. (It is interesting to note that a similar issue raised itself in Bailey’s last production at the Globe, Timon of Athens, where an overly stylistic emphasis on the parasitic carrion feeders removed any sense of responsibility from the profligate Timon).

Indeed, the set at times seems to overwhelm the action. Two motorised rings suspended over the stage which were used to move curtains and chains created an unnecessary distraction. And at 3 hours or so, this is a long version of Shakespeare’s second shortest play. I have reservations about the fourth act generally as it often tends to slump in Macbeth. Here, the apparition scene is gimmicky, while the England scene drags. Making his professional debut, James McArdle misses the pleasure that Malcolm needs to take in his list of imagined crimes in order to make it believable, and Keith Dunphy’s Macduff seemed to be in another production altogether. But Julius D’Silva’s Ross injected some much-needed energy and his voice resonated beautifully. And special mention must be made of Frank Scantori’s disgustingly hilarious Porter who managed the unthinkable and actually made us queasy amongst all the bloodshed. It’s forgetting, not remembering the Porter, which seems like it might be the challenge from this production.

Tickets:
£5 groundling ticket. Seats in the front row don’t come much cheaper than at Shakespeare’s Globe. Except for the fact that they aren’t, strictly speaking, seats, but one of 700 standing places in the yard, where (if you are prepared to queue for up to an hour in advance) you can stand within inches of the action. Having watched the whole production from within the canopy - I wonder how many other critics ventured down from the middle gallery? – I can vouch that it is not invasive or distracting. You actually have quite a lot more room around than you than you ordinarily would. I do worry that a hot summer matinee is going to send the number of Globe fainters through the roof although …

Programme:
£3.50

Total cost:
£8.50

Macbeth plays at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre until 27 June. Tickets from £5 to £35. Visit www.shakespeares-globe.org or call 020 7401 9919 for more information.