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MACBETH13 February - 7 March 1998by William ShakespeareDirected by Robert David MacDonald Designed by Kenny Miller Lighting by Paul Sorley
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Could it be sleight of hand? Spooky intervention? Surely it's more than judicious editing tht makes this Macbeth slip so swiftly by. There are cuts you notice in Robert David Macdonald's production, like the way the play dives straight into Macbeth's confrontation with the (all-male) witches, the absence of Lady Macduff, and some abrupt mid-speech elisions, but there's no omission that affects the direct flow of the story.
Yet here we are being ushered out after a single sitting, and it's scarcely 9pm. You'd even say Gerard Murphy in the title role had been taking his time. Wasn't that a leisurely stride he took between each "tomorrow" and "tomorrow" and "tomorrow"? A clear case, then, of speed not haste, producing a driving interpretation that defies your attention to wander.
Egged on by Anne Myatt's forbidding Lady Macbeth, Murphy's Macbeth kicks off with a pragmatic, "dirty job, but someone's got to do it" approach. Light-footedly springing into action, he is almost crippled by his moral abnegation, before fate sends him to his murderous (and disappointingly underplayed) end.
Paced by the ghosts of the murder victims, Kenny Miller's set is a black dungeon, circled by staircases and spliced by a guillotine-like mirrored wall. The severe lighting, sparse music, and skewed angles add to the sense of a world out of joint, of a morality violated, which only elemental powers can restore.
Characterised by rooted, grand, typically Citz performances, this is a Macbeth charged by the compelling engines of nature and narrative . . . it is as assured and accomplished as it is brief.
Director Robert David MacDonald has stripped the Scottish Play down to a child-friendly 90 minutes, emphasising the parry and thrust of the narrative. Duncan is reduced to a walk-on part, and we cut to the murder pretty damn quick. Similarly Malcolm and Macduff waste little time prating on before storming the castle.
The set can only be described as Batman trapped in Gotham City as imagined by Escher with plenty of dry ice thrown in for good measure. This is Macbeth, the rock 'n' roll years, brought to in matt-black with splashes of scarlet for that all-important aortic blood effect. A stainless steel portcullis rises and falls like a guillotine.
MacDonald has cast Macbeth and his lady wife with actors whose looks could be described as possessing "too, too solid flesh". Gerard Murphy, the nasty-looking cop in ITV's McCallum, has a touch of the Cro-Magnon around the forehead, suggeting a guy quite prepared to knock off anyone wh tried to block his promotion. Anne Myatt's lusty Lady Mac is more than a match. All in all, this is a real crowd pleaser. Greater actors than these have laden the familiar words with one spin of emotion too many. In all respects this production takes the view that less is more - apart from the dry ice.