At the risk of stating the obvious, Macbeth is An Extremely Well-Known Play. In Oxford alone it’s been produced at least five times in the last decade. And if you’re going to mount it again, in a town full of radical, deep-thinking, well-read audience-members, then you’d better make sure you’ve got a good reason for doing so. You might have a stunningly original interpretation, a powerful way to depict the blood, horror and ambition that soaks the script, or staging ideas that will take the onlookers’ breath away.
You need something.
Happier Years Productions describe their play as a ‘reinterpretation’ that reimagines Macbeth for audiences of today. That would be great, apart from… it doesn’t. Yes, they have the witches play a variety of roles, such as servants and doctors. But that doesn’t make them a manifestation of collective anxiety. It just makes them pop up more often, and if anything dissipates their role as embodiments of a fate that humanity cannot control.
In an interview in Cherwell last week, director Andrew Raynes said that what draws him to Macbeth is the minor characters, and that he sees the Macduffs’ marriage as just as important as the relationship between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. Intriguing, especially since the play contains not one scene, not even one line, between Macduff and Lady Macduff. Raynes’ view might explain why, in this production, the scenes between the Macbeths seemed so inconsequential. There was no sense of persuasion, temptation, manipulation, or even (unforgivably) in the banquet scene, marital awkwardness. There was one truly poignant moment however, when Juliette Imbert (Lady Macbeth) describes having given suck, and Leah Aspden (Macbeth) stops her talking with a tender ‘Shhhh’, and just hugs her. At that moment, humanity stirred in this production.
Apart from that, real emotion was in short supply. Possibly the most desolate, tragic moment in the entire play – and a candidate for most desolate and tragic in all English literature – is the scene where Macduff is told of his wife’s and children’s deaths. I have seen this moment reduce audiences to tears, as Macduff is unable to take in the enormity of his loss, and can only think of all his lost pretty chickens. I’ve never, until tonight, seen an audience snigger at the sight of Malcolm shouting at Macduff to ‘dispute it like a man’.
The production felt extremely static. Characters tended to stand in front of each other and talk, with occasional arm gestures. Watching the witches’ ‘masters’ deliver their equivocatory prophecies to Macbeth, standing in a row like bottles on a wall, while Macbeth stood obediently facing them, I was reminded of productions past, in which the physicality of the scene seared it into your brain: Ian McKellen in Trevor Nunn’s famous 1976 production, tied up and blindfolded, dribbling saliva, while the witches waved homespun dolls in front of his fevered brow. Similarly, the fighting was lacklustre and uninspired: a quick stab of a stage dagger did nothing to convey the panic and confusion of Banquo’s murder. Again, I thought back to a student production during my own time, when the fighting was meticulously choreographed with staves, and Macbeth literally bit his own wooden staff to stop himself laughing at the death of Young Siward.
There was plenty of top acting talent on display here: Hetta Johnson (Macduff), Juliette Imbert (Lady Macbeth) Bella McInroy (Lady Macduff) and Leah Aspden (Macbeth) are all awesome performers, and I felt truly saddened that they could not have been part of a better production.
Lack of resources, lack of acting ability, lack of rehearsal time: these are all things you might encounter in a student production, and it would be unfair to criticise it for those reasons, which are beyond the control of the cast and creatives. What there is no excuse for is lack of ideas and lack of effort. Every production should, in Macbeth’s words, ‘fight till from its bones its flesh be hacked’. If not, I’m afraid the audience is in for a long night of toil and trouble.