The idea behind this production is enticing and daring. The year is 1969. A theatrical couple famous for their tempestuous relationship (for which read Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor) is planning a new production of Macbeth. They invite their cast of louche thespians to a dinner party at their palatial country estate for an initial read-through. Then, in the words of the marketing spiel, 'As bottles of wine are emptied, plates cleared, and the script read aloud for the very first time, the line between drunken theatrics and sobering reality begins to fade. Hidden tensions, bitter resentment, and latent desire bubble to the surface as Shakespeare’s story of ambition, corruption, and seduction comes alive, and druidic forces descend upon a world of glamour and vice.'
Sounds fun, doesn't it? A merging of Jacobean and hippie culture perhaps. Maybe it will be a newly written piece, in which the spirit of Macbeth is somehow conjured from the mists of time, and leads the unsuspecting cast on a Bacchic dance of self-discovery, like J. M. Barrie on amphetamines.
But this is not what happens. And the warning bell is rung by the final line of the publicity material: 'Text is 95% Shakespeare’s original text with some small creative license taken'. To be fair, they did not lie. 'Some small creative license taken' is a sadly apt description of this show. But with an idea as clever as that I want LOTS of creative license to be taken. The last thing we need, especially in Oxford, a town groaning under the weight of summer Shakespeare - a town, in fact, which had a production of Macbeth at The Playhouse as recently as last week - is a straight performance of the Scottish play.
But that's what The Oxford Rep Company gives us. Contrary to what is advertised, there is no sign of hidden tension, bitter resentment or latent desire bubbling anywhere, least of all to the surface. Instead, the 60s setting is no more than a superficial starting point, after which a group of recent graduates works through a relatively conventional performance of Macbeth.
The opening promises much. The actors gather round the dinner table and have lots of fun reading their scripts awkwardly and laughing about it, like a bunch of old luvvies fresh from shooting The Lion in Winter. The conversation swings between new text and old, and there's a sense of something daring about to happen. Then one of the cast dives under the table and emerges on the other side as a witch. From that point on, the 1969 milieu is little more than a backdrop. Granted, the music and costumes continue to evoke flower power, but the play itself reverts to what can only be described as standard mode.
The production even ignores the potential of sections which are an obvious gift to the avowed concept. The Banquet Scene, for example, is ideal fodder for a production set ostensibly at a dinner party. But by that point the 1969 concept has been all but abandoned, and instead we just get a Basic Banquet, exactly the same as the one most audiences have seen many times before (but in this case stripped of its aura of domestic embarrassment by having not the confused thanes but the witches as dinner guests). Similarly, the Double Double Toil and Trouble scene simply yells out for a bit of 60s psychedelia, but no: we just get a trio of predictably witchy witches reciting their unholy catechism around the cauldron.
It's such a shame, but it has to be said: the execution does not live up to the potential of the idea. In the hands of a theatre company like, say, Spymonkey, this would have been an opportunity to take the audience to places Macbeth had never been before. In fact, sitting next to me on my desk right now is a graphic novel called Findlay Macbeth by Kev Sutherland, which relocates the story to 1970s Scotland and makes Macbeth a low-level salesman who gets passed over for promotion and plots his revenge. It's about 25% Shakespeare text, but it creates an entirely new perspective while remaining thematically true to Shakespeare's story. That's a properly original take.
There are other bizarre choices in this production that compound its creative timidity. Most noticeably, the music is both way too loud and clunkily intermittent. During the midnight scene after Duncan's murder, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (the ever-impressive Kate Harkness battling insuperable odds) literally have to scream at each other to be heard above the music, which is ludicrous in itself, but even more so when you remember that they are trying to be as secretive as possible at this point. I found myself wondering if they even did a technical rehearsal for this performance. At other points the music crashes in and out as if operated by a child with a 1980s Casio audiocassette player. In the final scene The Doors' evocative soundscape The End starts playing, then abruptly cuts off, leaving thirty seconds of silence before suddenly restarting for no apparent reason.
Another deeply puzzling decision is to make the character of Banquo female. It's been many years since the idea of any gender actor playing any gender role became rightly commonplace. A woman can play a man and vice versa. But in 1969, when this version is supposed to be set, there is no way Banquo would have been presented as female in the world of the play itself (certainly not in a Richard Burton production). To make the character female just because the actor today is a woman smacks of blinkered conventionality.
My final major gripe is about the accuracy of the lines themselves. Macbeth is one of the most well-known pieces of literature in the English language, and while some textual slip-ups are to be expected, in general those famous lines should be word-perfect. But some of the actors make so many mistakes that I actually started to wonder if they were using a previously undiscovered copy of the play. Even bits of the 'Is this a dagger' speech were fumbled, and one of the most hauntingly evocative brief passages in the entire play, 'Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,' is completely gone.
Although the overall impression is one of missed chances, there are some lovely moments in this show, and also some great performances. A baby turning into a bloody shroud during the sleepwalking scene is a perfect way to illustrate Lady Macbeth's obsessions. And Kate Harkness being forced to sing a modern ballad at the banquet is disquieting and unexpected.
The cast is made up of some of the finest actors to have passed through Oxford in recent years, but I have to pick out Ethan Bareham as Malcolm for particular praise. Traditionally, Malcolm is the most thankless role in the play, a slightly underpowered do-gooder who wins out with the help of the real hero, Macduff. Bareham has made him into a psychotic control-freak, all wild eyes and mocking sniggers - and it is a completely convincing interpretation. I have probably seen at least forty different productions of Macbeth, but I've never seen Malcolm played like that before. Bareham has totally reinvented the character, at one fell swoop.
It's never enjoyable to give a bad review, and I do believe the members of the Oxford Rep Company have massive potential and enormous talent. But they must generate the confidence to find the full potential of their ideas. Otherwise they are hoodwinking their audiences with their advertising claims. They should be a bit more disrespectful to the classic plays they are working with. Only by tearing something to pieces can you discover how to make something new out of it. Destruction is the fieriest form of creativity. So next time, forget the 'small creative license'. Take Shakespeare out into the street, and beat him up. Who knows what you'll find?