It is a shame all productions of Shakespeare aren’t like Cheek By Jowl’s Macbeth in the Silk Street Theatre at the Barbican: 120 minutes of uninterrupted action on a clean, uncluttered stage where the lighting is the set.
So often the ‘two hours’ traffic of our stage’ come in at nearer four when less is clearly almost always more: these plays are working scripts, not sacred texts, and directors shouldn’t hesitate to cut them when they can.
Macbeth, like the other great tragedies of the individual: Hamlet, King Lear and Othello, rarely allows its eponymous hero a breather but director Declan Donnellan nonetheless manages to make an ensemble piece of the play.
Clever doubling subtly hints that Lady Macbeth is one of the witches and makes full use of a versatile, talented cast; most of whom remain in the shadows at the edges of the stage throughout the performance where they feed Macbeth’s doubts and fears, adding to the growing sense that he is a victim of fates beyond the compass of human knowledge.
The production notes tell us that Macbeth is a tragedy of the imagination in which the protagonists and even the minor characters encounter omens and portents that may or may not be real and equivocation is the governing principle in the universe. Donnellan takes this to its logical conclusion and enables his audience to imagine all the props: daggers, letters, swords, jewels and nooses.
The effect is extraordinary: such is the skill of the actors that the stabs and thrusts (with invisible weapons) in the play’s many murders are infinitely more frightening than anything you will see at the cinema – even in 3D.
If theatre is to continue to compete with film in the age of hi-def and holographic projection then productions like this will lead the way in harnessing audiences’ imagination and suspending disbelief until “function is smothered in surmise, / And nothing is but what is not.” Macbeth. Act I. Sc iii.
