THEATRE: Guy Willoughby
IN a programme note to Macbeth, at the Alexander Theatre, director Craig Freimond observes that Shakespeare’s great plays “are so well known that it becomes difficult to find fresh readings of them, and even if you do, there will be many who disagree with your interpretation”.
Quite true, but the inevitability of disagreement keeps Shakespeare’s texts alive: Macbeth survives because the questions it raises — questions about power, sovereignty and passion — still provoke and disturb. Freimond has largely chosen to tell the famous story without fuss or interpretive distraction, to allow the language to bode forth the play. In this, he very largely succeeds.
Top acting honours here go, quite properly, to that troubled and childless couple, the Macbeths, as well as to the tyrant’s bete noire, the vengeful general Macduff.
Frantz Dobrowsky gives us an intense, restrained Macbeth, a slight man in the grip of a vast desire for power. Dobrowsky’s Macbeth is a man struggling to contain his urges within the bounds of the feudal order, which decree his unswerving vassalage to King Duncan (rather stolidly played by Roger Dwyer).
As the drama proceeds, and the Thane of Cawdor finds that achieving his ambition is a hellish trap, Dobrowsky’s Macbeth projects an awesome, wracked determination to stay the course. Deluded and deserted, this Macbeth faces his inevitable death with a courage that offsets the murderous cruelty of earlier deeds. Truly, nothing becomes his life on stage like the leaving of it.
Jennifer Steyn’s Lady Macbeth is a plangent, wistful creature, a woman more determined to affect ruthlessness than to achieve it. Her appeal in Act II to the powers of darkness to “unsex” her is fluttery and naive, interestingly unconvincing.
When the full implications of that appeal hit home, much later, she cannot deal with the realisation, and dies. Her final, broken attempts to somehow expunge guilt are painfully pathetic. Steyn’s Lady Macbeth is the naive society wife, desperately anxious for her husband’s success, but who lacks the inner flint that truly ruthless ambition demands. We cannot hate a creature so woefully unaware of herself.
David Clatworthy impresses as a virile, explosive Macduff, whose final showdown with Macbeth is an exciting display of broadswording. As an articulate, passionate Malcolm, the king-to-be, newcomer Alex Ferns is clearly an actor of promise; David Butler’s Banquo, Macbeth’s friend and unwitting rival, likewise feels like an honest man and sturdy foil to Macbeth.
Some of the supporting players give rather feeble vocal performances — and in fact even Dobrowsky and Clatworthy’s voices were rather strained on opening night. (Too many rowdy previews for schools, perhaps?)
The production features suitably dark and atmospheric electronic dischords, composed by Jason Armstrong. Chris van den Berg’s set is efficiently multi-purposed, though why exactly it should resemble a vacant industrial lot (tatty corrugated iron, cumbersome metal drums) is unclear.
The setting is the usual rather odd blend of time zones lately favoured in Shakespearian productions — the outfits seem borrowed from an old Star Trek costume- cupboard — but all of this distracts rather than interferes with the nub of the drama.
No one, of course, knows what to do with the witches anymore: the idea of a few old women cackling on stage somehow is anathema to the late 20th century, so here we are visited with the usual bunch of irritating punkified grotesques conducting what looks, and sounds, like a first-year movement exercise. Really, if the witches can’t be done without squeamishness, it would be far better to drop them, or the play, after all.
Freimond’s Macbeth is focused, springily-paced and intelligent. The production may lack full-blown tragic resonances, and only sketchily projects those darker reaches of the human spirit from which the tragedy springs. But Freimond and his cast have told a full- blooded story with verve and articulacy. We can hope for no more than that.