Sound and Fury (II)

I saw a woman forcibly drowned on Saturday night. What made it worse was that it was that nice Gillian Kearney from Brookside and more importantly many other thespian outings in this fair city. It was of course Macbeth - I seem to have blown the shock with the banner up there haven't I. Kearney was playing, amongst several other roles, Lady Macduff who is put to death with "All my pretty ones" on the orders of the old tyrant himself. In this case we were treated to neck-breaking, drowning and beheading all within the cat-swinging range of the audience afforded by the "in-the-square" stage of The Everyman. There is minimal actual scenery in that square but the periphery is dressed in best post-industrial rust and decay that eminently suits this play. What scenery there is either comes down from the space-ship pipes in the roof or is placed by black-clad stage hands on tiny luminous spots that I only noticed towards the end. There are fetid pools in the broken floor and firey grids that surely connect the damned man of the title and his wife with hell itself.

I was expecting modern dress but this was modern dress of an alternative reality with rusty ceremonial fittings to distinguish the real warriors from the effete royalty, non-functional chain mail glued roughly to faded army surplus contrasting with the Post-WWII functionality and cleanliness of what I think were Luftwaffe uniforms. Of course everyone starts on the same side until Macbeth and wife fight only for themselves, driven mad with ambition that exceeds their capabilities and states-of-mind. There is no "side" to any of this - the monologues are intense and wordy as in all Shakespeare but nothing is outside the text. Maybe you can find analogies that point to Will sucking up to James Six/One but this is an action movie with some added self-psycho analysis thrown in for the quiet bits and dramatic they are. The whole stage for Macbeth to strut his ambition on and how does he celebrate the murder of a king with she who encourages him? He stands shocked and bloody skulking in an alcove at the back, like a thug in an alleyway after stabbing someone.

And the witches appear again, to give him comfort with their seemingly cast-iron guarantees of success that boost his self-confidence above his doubts, the hubris reacting with the madness created by earlier doubts to create an insomniac monster who deserves his fate entirely. We are left with the powerful Macduff panting at his success like some animal, yet bending his knee to the Wet and a Weed king Malcolm, while Banquo's son begins the video-pointed-at-itself rise to royalty.

This is a fitting last play to stage before The Everyman is knocked down and rebuilt. It is powerful and tight.