by Triple work, triple and trouble. This August, the CSI Macbeth; later in the month David Tennant and Cush Jumbo at the Donmar. Meanwhile, there’s Simon Godwin’s portrayal of him Macbeth comes with alluring casting: Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma are the magnetic murderers. It also offers a wider audience, staging it in a series of converted warehouses, in Liverpool, London, Edinburgh and Washington DC.
This is not specific to the setting in the way Kenneth Branagh’s performance was 10 years ago: performance in a deconsecrated Manchester church (and candles snuffed out for the evening), theme and setting completely ringing. But he envelops his audience in the disturbing discomfort of the play. No plush. Chill in the air: spectators kept their coats on. Uncushioned sounds in metallic space. The audience is approached through a deleted preview. Frankie Bradshaw – a rising star in stage design – created a wasteland of tipped telegraph poles, pieces of masonry, a half-exploded tree, a burnt-out car. Smoke billows up; embers glow, softly lit by Jai Morjaria. Amidst the distant crash and boom of explosions, there is the thin tinkle of an accordion.
This would be just a lonely decoration if Fiennes and Varma are not strong in projecting the unequivocal quality that sustains the play. All his blood-bolted dynamism, Macbeth subtly pivot, his perception of what is real and what is real is continually slipping and dissolving. The Macbeths give some of Shakespeare’s most memorable speeches when they are most ruthless.
Harriet Walter focuses on herself physically, as upright and unbending as a hammer
The couple are wonderful together: complimenting complex silences even as they speak. They encourage each other towards regicide without much personal dialogue. Strong apart, too. Fiennes seems to be tackling his part – hovering over it with his intelligence. Sometimes he overdoes it, mimicking the action – focusing on his heart – so that big speeches become almost shadow play. Very clear but very willing. But he can deliver the verse, keeping the beat, with exceptional direct and natural emphasis. He goes from a decent soldier who is not too gloomy into a murderer, through a period of mild hysteria. This is echoed in Bradshaw’s outfit, as he moves from bulky combat gear – green and brown camouflage, all around the rough edges with straps and buckles and rucksack – to formal military attire and a slim suit. He becomes his own dagger. Varma Macbeth is a wonderful woman. Free from histrionics, she sees the killing as an inevitable career transition, but still reconciles with tears at the loss of her love. In a sweater and V-neck trousers, she is elegant, managerial: like a French movie star in the 60s.
Billed as an “adapter”, Emily Burns has cut the ale, which is a relief on the whole, especially since the evening is not free of hilarity; Fiennes provides some sardonic snickering. The strange top and tail sisters of the action (hurrah!), speaking decisively. But their fantastic wild curses have been overcome and, dressed in puffa jackets over tattered skirts and trousers, they are clearly too obvious to be the alien voice of truth. There is a sentimentality that will not allow them to be unfaithful, being put off by the idea of rushing women. It’s good to see the branches of the Birram Wood being cut – but more foliage is needed if they are to be a cover.
Among the horrors, there are moments that argue about “everything a man could be”. Ben Turner makes Macduff more likable when he breaks down the news of his family being killed. Meanwhile, Jonathan Case makes the small part of Seyton glimmer with emotion; his ear drops start to look like a tear.
Rebecca Frecknall is helping to change the vocabulary of classical drama: her dance-narrative productions make the barrier between naturalism and disturbing dreams seem permeable. She started the year with a wonderful reimagining of Streetcar Named Desire. She ends it with a cool reimagining of Federico García Lorca’s 1936 play about a martinet mother and the five daughters she locks in virgin isolation. As for Lorca’s most realistic play (there are no symbolic figures of the moon roaming the stage; all the characters have proper names), it is easy to see in Bernarda Alba’s house a picture of political tyranny. Completed weeks before the coup that started the civil war and only months before the playwright was killed by a firing squad, it was not produced commercially in Spain while Franco was in power.
Frecknall is well equipped to deal with the dangers of staging a British Lorca: an overdose of Spanish energy (stallions snorting around every corner); excessive pallor (as if passed through Cranford); becoming so saturated with symbols that the action hurts. Alice Birch brings the history of family drama to adaptation: she worked on it Successionand with her Anatomy of Suicide eloquently examined damage transmitted down the generations of women.
Everything is clever, but the purpose is too obvious. Birch’s emphatic version expands the dead patriarch’s sexual predation to include the abuse of his stepdaughter. She brings on the stage the figure of lusted men-after a slow, muscly dance performance. Women’s favorite adjective is “fucking”, which is a joke, or a wish – because that’s not something they have to do. In Merle Hensel’s arresting design – a dollhouse prison that runs the full height of the stage – the family is seen first in silhouette. Side by side in separate cells/bedrooms, the five daughters (and their mad grandmother) press themselves against the windows to see, against the walls to listen, slowly undressing and drooling. Headboards, chairs, mirrors, the gate that keeps men away are iron perimeters. The house is a skeleton: a body without flesh. It is an X-ray of the great drama: but, chillingly graphic rather than stifling, it affirms rather than removes.
Related: ‘I studied the play at school – I hated it’: Cush Jumbo and David Tennant playing the Macbeths
Harriet Walter is a wonderful matriarch. Still and watching, she focuses herself physically, as standing and unielield as a hammer. She has lost the deep dip in her voice that she had as a young woman: the delivery is adamantine, as split as her limbs – until the end. As the brighter of its siblings, Eliot Salt provides a clear visual levitation. Bryony Hannah is particularly convincing as a teenager: her life is as reduced to that of her mistress, she slips around like a painful punctuation mark.
Star ratings (out of five)
Macbeth ★★★★
Bernarda Alba’s house ★★★
