Macbeth Part II

On this trip I've been given the opportunity to see many productions of Shakespeare, and in particular while in Oxford, two different versions of the same production. I find it interesting to see how different directors interpret one play, in this case Macbeth. The Royal Shakespeare Company, whose production I saw last week, and the Oxford Theatre Guild, whose Macbeth I saw last night, both interpreted Macbeth in wildly different ways. And while neither had a particularly amazing (or even good, in the case of the second) production, there were interesting and contrasting choices made by the directors of both.

I will start off by saying that even though I've seen two productions of Macbeth, they are the only two I've seen, and since both were not what I would consider conventional in that neither stuck very close to the text, I would say that in watching both I felt a bit like I'd lost an opportunity. I wanted to see a Macbeth as I've heard of Macbeth, with three witches, a lot of blood and murder, and the general creepiness which accompanies the play in general.

The RSC's production was extremely creepy and unsettling, and if they did one thing well it was creating an atmosphere that was meant to make the audience uneasy and make one feel almost as if in a nightmare. The sets were dark, there was a lot of blood staining pale skin and white costumes. The witches were replaced with children who came down from the ceiling on meathooks and eerily pronounced Macbeth's future before running away, laughing. They cut such famous lines as 'something wicked this way comes.' The porter, a comical character, was made to double as the porter to hell, leading away the dead characters through a door. There was excellent music made by three women in full view playing cellos, and although a lot of the play lacked in good acting and made some interesting decisions regarding religious imagery that didn't quite work, the ending of the play was extremely striking to watch. As the cello music swelled, filling the theatre with foreboding music, a once dead Macbeth rose from the floor and stared towards a door filled with black, to which the Porter beckoned him, and as he took his first steps forward the lights darkened and the theatre fell silent.

Now, the Oxford Macbeth was given a similar ending, but with only recorded music and at the mercy of the setting sun, being outdoors, they weren't quite able to make the performance area pitch black, or fill the audience with the same sense of unease because they couldn't create the atmosphere in which to do so. I wondered if they were aware of the ending of the RSC production and had tried to replicate it, or if this is how Macbeths usually end. A huge difference between this and the RSC production was that this time there were witches--9 of them, to be exact, and not all of them women. Barely any of their lines were cut and indeed the part of the witches was made larger, with at least one witch on stage for most of the play, giving the impression that they were influencing largely the events of the play, making the story less about Macbeth's own ambition leading to his downfall and instead putting all events in the hands of fate. This perhaps could have been done just as well with just three witches.

Both productions had, well, not-so-good acting and, in the Oxford production, not-so-good anything else aside from interesting interpretation of events. But it was really fascinating to see how this one play was interpreted in completely opposite ways by two different theatre companies. With the RSC there were no witches, just the ghosts of children, which left the fault to Macbeth more than anyone else. With the Oxford production the witches had control of everything, and so Macbeth was relieved of his responsibility for his actions. This shows how important the role of the director is in putting on a play, and also perhaps why Shakespeare's plays never lose their appeal: each director who puts it on has a different way of conveying the story to the audience. Just watch any two productions of Hamlet and it becomes clear that two different versions of this same play could almost seem like two different plays, just as the two different productions of Macbeth came across.

I may post more detailed reviews of the other plays, or just talk about them in general, since on this program I've seen a lot of interesting interpretations of Shakespeare in general. Many I haven't been detailed about because I've had to review them for class. But after some time I probably will be able to write about them in a shorter than 10 page blog.