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The Theatreguide.London Review
In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic
forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted
by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others
by streaming new shows. Until things return to normal we review
the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.
Macbeth
Royal
Shakespeare Company and YouTube Summer 2020
Widely regarded as the finest
production of Macbeth in a generation, Trevor Nunn's 1976 Royal
Shakespeare Company staging with Ian McKellen and Judi Dench retains all
its power in this 1979 television version, which is well deserving of
rediscovery four decades later.
The original staging, done in
the round in a small space and with minimal props, drew much of its power
from the audience's closeness to the actors. So the TV version's even
greater intimacy – I haven't measured this but I would guess that close to
half of what you see are single faces in extreme close-up – takes things
even further in the same direction.
A special bonus to looking
back at this production from the present is the reminder that that was a
Golden Age for the RSC, with an extraordinarily strong mid-level to its
company. Supporting roles here are played by John Woodvine, Bob Peck, Ian
McDiarmid, Roger Rees, Greg Hicks and Griffith Jones, with nobody noticing
anything particularly remarkable about all that talent in one room.
Ian McKellen shows us a
Macbeth who senses from the start that he's getting into something that
will be far more complicated than it seems, and who faces each new
challenge with a horror mixed with an almost ironic resignation and with a
determination to keep going that takes on a terrible dignity and heroism.
Judi Dench clearly sees that
the key to Lady Macbeth's tragedy is that she is exactly the opposite –
assuming from the start that it will all be quick and easy and that she is
stronger than he, she begins to crumble the minute things get thorny and
he shows that he really doesn't need to rely on her.
You may live a lifetime
without seeing a more soul-wrenching Sleepwalking Scene than Dench's, but
it does not come out of nowhere as we have watched the character moving
toward it all along.
The stars draw us into their
characters in ways that are fascinatingly different but equally effective.
McKellen frequently plays directly to the camera, while Dench does not, so
that we are lured into his private scenes as co-conspirators while feeling
uneasily voyeuristic about hers.
Bob Peck's Macduff is the
best I've ever seen. Almost uniquely in my experience of this play
director Nunn and actor Peck see – and make us see – that the England
Scene, in which Macduff begs Malcolm to lead a rebellion against Macbeth,
is not about Malcolm's self-slanders but Macduff's desperation.
John Woodvine is a thoughtful
and suspicious Banquo, who sees more than he lets on, and the play loses a
significant anchor in reality when his character goes.
Some very insightful
combining of minor characters and doubling of roles turn Greg Hicks (Third
Murderer, Seyton, others) into a dark and foreboding presence, while Ian
McDiarmid plays a string of more benevolent roles as the production's Good
Angel.
If there is a criticism to
make about the TV version it is that designer Mike Hall carries stage
designer John Napier's imagery a little too far. With just about everyone
dressed in black against black backgrounds, the broadcast is almost
monochromatic, and TV director Philip Casson has almost every single scene
begin with actors slowly emerging from blackness and end with them
receding back into it.
The best Macbeth of its era, this may well be the best Macbeth you will ever see.
Gerald Berkowitz
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