theatre

Macbeth

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Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma. Photo by Matt Humphrey.

Macbeth by William Shakespeare – Dock X, London

Simon Godwin’s production of Macbeth, starring Ralph Fiennes, touring non-traditional venues, is reminiscent of the Almeida’s double-header of Richard II and Coriolanus, staged in the pre-conversion Gainsborough Studios, with Fiennes playing both leads. That was in 2000, and Fiennes is still bringing in the crowds, burnishing his reputation as one of the great actors of his generation. This record includes, but does not depend upon, his Shakespearian work, with Mark Antony in both Antony & Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, Richard III, and Coriolanus (in the 2011 film) all performances of the highest calibre. His Macbeth is another major achievement, a portrayal that offers a persuasive account of a man veering rapidly into evil.

The show’s London venue is the Surrey Quays warehouse, Dock X, which provides a very successful auditorium with a large capacity, but excellent sight lines all the way to the back row. There is a gesture at immersiveness, with the audience entering through a miniature war zone with burned out car, but the production is surprisingly traditional in the right ways. Frankie Bradshaw’s concrete stepped set is simple but entirely effective, adapting with minimal fuss while creating the impression of Scotland as a militarised landscape. Soldiers wear battle fatigues so, when different costumes appear, they make a big visual impression: Lady Macbeth in a vivid green gown, Macbeth in a purple robe. The witches hover between ordinary and scary, three young women in dungarees and puffa jackets who might be hanging around on any street corner – a strong approach that normalises the extreme.

Fiennes himself is evidently an efficient soldier partly because he is single-minded to the point of lacking social skills. He is awkward and abrupt in the opening scenes, while Indira Varma plays Lady Macbeth as an influencer, who knows how to present people in their best light. It makes sense that these two are together, and that Lady Macbeth is in control. She can shape and direct her husband to make the most of his opportunities. But the production makes the tipping point clear, when her plans start to spin out of control. As soon as she tells her husband he is ‘lily-livered’, having declared that Duncan’s murder would make him a man, their pact is broken. After this betrayal, Macbeth is unleashed to live his worst life.

Godwin’s production is based around notably clear verse speaking, that makes the text sound fresh in a way that only the best productions can pull off. Fiennes leads the way in this, making all the great moments, especially the ‘brief candle’ speech, revelations. He is mesmerising, the best and most believable Macbeth I’ve had the good fortune to see, and Indira Varma is a match for his performance, making Lady Macbeth a great deal more comprehensible than is often the case, a woman who will give all in exchange for the rewards she confidently anticipates, only to disastrously miscalculated the cost.

The production also gives the wider cast weight and presence. Making the unusual, but understandable, decision to cut the Porter scene pays off through enhanced narrative drive. Another of Godwin’s achievements is to make the Macduff/Malcolm scene in England, often dismissed as an aberration, actually work. Malcolm (Ewan Black) is genuinely wrestling with self-doubt about his fitness to rule, not playing games, but it is swept away by the terrible revelation that Macduff’s (Ben Turner) family has been murdered. This moment is centre of the play’s second half, balanced against the murder of Duncan in the first, and showing how it can be played makes it complete.

A strong cast also features Steffan Rhodri as a poetically Welsh Macduff, Rebecca Scroggs as a justifiably furious Lady Macduff, and Jake Neads and Michael Hodgson as the two murderers. The ungainly presence of the latter, is used cleverly as the witches (Lucy Mangan, Daniella Fiamanya and Lola Shalam) channel their visions of the future through Hodgson’s twitching body. Christopher Shutt’s sound design creates an eerie backdrop to the action, with hints of The Exorcist that make this production not so much bewitched, as possessed. The combination of characters destroyed by their own personalities, excitingly portrayed by Fiennes and Varma, and a war-ravaged setting in which people are not what they seem, makes this a production to savour.

Ghosts

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Ghosts by Henrik Ibsen – Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London

Joe Hill-Gibbins’ production of Ghosts is the first Ibsen to be staged in the candelit glow of the Sam Wanamaker Theatre, and it looks remarkable. Set and costumes, designed by Rosanna Vise, are from a decadent mid-20th century society. The back wall consists of mirrors and the floor a cocoon of blood red, deep pile carpet. It is alluring and disturbing like the costumes – the upper class characters in velvet dresses and satin waistcoats, enfolding iron gloves. From the upper levels, the production takes place beneath a bank of six chandeliers which, while offering more of a glimpsed view than a theatre audience would expect, show the action in soft focus. The whole production looks like Visconti’s 1963 film, ‘The Leopard’, in its low light designed to reveal only costly surfaces. Osvald, infected with syphilis, compares his softening brain to “cherry-coloured velvet”, and the setting depicts suffocating interiors from which there is no escape.

It remains hard to imagine how Ibsen’s play, still direct and shocking, would have seemed to its original audience. Hill-Gibbins deploys the high end cast at his disposal with relish, and they make the most of Ibsen’s brutal exposé of hypocrisy. Paul Hilton’s Parson Manders is a canting fool, a man whose only show of strength lies in his moral convictions, which are thoroughly mistaken. It is hard to imagine why Hattie Morahan’s Helene Alving loved him, but the fact she did makes the poverty of her existence plain. She gives a riveting performance, quivering with a lifetime’s suppressed rage, then collapsing with absolute despair. Stuart Thompson as her son, Osvald, conveys the character’s conflicting emotions and failure to escape his social constraints very well indeed. Sarah Slimani’s Regene is blunt and unsentimental, the only character with any hope of achieving any freedom. And Greg Hicks is brilliant as the wheedling, deceitful Engstram, who has Manders in the palm of his hand. He creeps around the stage with his bad leg, like Richard III without the social position. Yet we feel a residual sympathy for a man whose class has limited his opportunities to opening a brothel and getting others to fund his drinking.

Hill-Gibbins, consistently one of the most interesting British directors of the classics, pulls off a sophisticated, layered account. He has also adapted the play, and the version is crisp and startling. This production shows the quality of productions that the Globe Theatre, frustratingly inconsistent in the past, can and should be staging. It also reconfirms the reputation of Ghosts as one of the touchstone plays that made modern theatre.