A Famous Thane

Macbeth 
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer

I am sorry to go on about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s public relations but their latest display advertisement combines a puff for the famous Royal Shakespeare Theatre (gosh, not the Royal Shakespeare Theatre) with the announcement for the Aldwych of Wedekind’s celebrated comedy The Marquis of Keith. Just where these celebrations have been carried on I am unsure, but I doubt if you were invited.

Anyway, this week at Stratford they have given us William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy of Macbeth, with the celebrated Scottish actor Nicol Williamson in the title role. Ever since he began astonishing us a decade ago we have awaited Mr Williamson’s Macbeth for many reasons, not all of them ethical. Still, it was shrewd of Trevor Nunn, the director, to capitalize on his star’s origins and present us with a Scotland fit for nationalists to speak in. All the gentlemen have a bash at the accent, the only southerner audibly present is Helen Mirren’s Lady Macbeth, a sexy predator who has crossed the border to drain her husband of his virtue and allegiance as if they North Sea oil.

Visually there is nothing particularly Caledonian about Mr. Nunn’s production, which appears to be going on partly in its hero's head and partly in church. As we enter the theatre we are faced by what appears to be an alter table; doors at the back of the stage are able to blow open for processional entrances, as if the characters were coming at us down the nave of a cathedral.

At the beginning of the play we watch the coronation of Duncan, a paradigm of order; a pair of white curtains close across the scene, and, in shadow play, we watch destruction sicken. Some kind of horned being appears to be breaking up the ceremony with a gigantic inverted crucifix, silhouettes can be peculiarly horrific. It looks as though three figures are levitating from the debris, and sure enough, when the curtains part, there are the witches, perched cosily on a giant chandelier. The conflict of good and evil established, we begin the play. 

The theological emphasis enables Mr. Williamson to give full value to passages that are generally skimped: ‘I'm the eternal jewel given to the common enemy of man’ is a realisation that eats into his consciousness, and into ours as well. There is no more immediate actor on our stage and his performance develops through a series of breath-taking insights. At the beginning he is the most jovial of successful generals and at the close the hopeless of forsaken tyrants. 

Other actors have shown me desperation, but I do not believe I have ever had a clearer glimpse of despair (not, in fact, a condition encountered in many roles) than in Mr. Williamson’s last scenes, and in particular in his speaking—shorn of false or any other nobility—of ‘tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’ (Mr. Nunn’s production, which can be surprisingly literal in a symbolic sort of way, gives him an actual brief candle to blow out, just as earlier he has had a real poisoned chalice to commend to his one lips). It is time, by the way , to dispose of the assumption that this actor cannot speak verse. A Victorian critic, paying tribute to Irving’s ‘staccato, raven croak,’ held that elocution was primarily the art of making yourself heard and understood. By that standard Mr. Williamson, like Irving, is a superb elocutionist. 

But he can be heavy-handed with it: literally. Climax after climax in this performance is accompanied by the steady pounding of fists on furniture. There is a heart-stopping moment when Macbeth first catches sight of Banquo’s ghost, but the relentless percussion which follows can only cheapen it. Some of the power of his concluding scenes derives from their stillness, with Macbeth perched high and lonely on a devil’s throne, itself perched on what appears to be several layers of table. By this time the subjective aspect of the proaction has become paramount, scenes in which Macbeth does not appear are cut to the quick (which does not mean played very fast), while minor characters are allowed as little time on stage as possible. 

Still, an exclusive focus on the tragic hero is, at this stage of theatrical history, no bad direction in which to err. It chimes, too, with other RSC productions; Richard II to an extent, certainly Dr. Faustus, even Tom Stoppard’s Travesties have all led us into their protagonists’ minds; and have occasioned an unprecedented quantity of major acting. As far as the classics are concerned, I am tired of group therapy and am ready to subscribe to the cult of the individual. It may mean that RSC, who have crested with the histories and never lacked for success in comedy, will finally be able to conquer the tragedies.