Double Toil and Trouble

Macbeth
The Old Vic
The Observer

Peter O’Toole has not acted in a major Shakespearean role for 17 years. Bryan Forbes has not directed in the theatre before. Macbeth (Old Vic) is a very difficult play. So much for excuses.

The designer is new as well, though his set looks decidedly old: standard-issue rostra approached by what you might call the general run of steps, the only playful variant being the daunting height of the bottom rung, on which somebody is going to come to grief before the end of the season. Surveying this structure, and noting too the grubby William the Conquerer costumes, I settled down nostalgically to a one-foot-up, one-foot-down evening. Expectations were dashed, however, as Mr Forbes production began to take on a quite untraditional identity of its own.

He stretches, for starters, one of Shakespeare’s briefest plays to more than three hours’ playing time. Built up permanent sets are meant at least to permit of unbroken transitions from scene to scene. Here there are constant blackouts, filled with optimistically spooky music, and lifting to reveal a stage on which, puzzlingly, almost nothing has changed. Occasionally a few dead bodies will have disentangled themselves from the picturesque poses in which they have been cluttering up the place; and the prospect may be altered by the loss or gain of a stool.

A cross is momentarily suspended, to show that someone has noticed the play’s Christian imagery, though this perceptiveness does not extend to the English scene; Malcolm and Macduff conduct their heart searchings beneath a fully-manned gibbet. This is the single most curious store of the evening, though the presentation of the witches as one of the sexier sister acts on the blasted-heath circuit runs it close.

A more defensible idea, made risible by the shaky tone of the production generally, is the voluminous bloodiness of Macbeth’s hands, and subsequently of Banquo’s ghost. Either sight would be enough to send the protagonist into a coma. Unfortunately Mr O’Toole has been in this state from the outset, so he has nowhere to go. Chances are he loves the play, but his performance suggests that he is taking some kind of personal revenge on it, methodically draining it of sense and variety. His last line comes out as ‘And damned by him that first cries hold e-nough’; and though the pounding beat may suit Macbeth in extremis, he has given much the same emphasis to all the words he has encountered on the way.

Eccentric rhythms reminiscent of Ralph Richardson are relayed to us in the fretful tones of Malcolm Muggeridge, with a few intimations of self-disgust found in the role by Ian McKellen. Mr O’Toole’s conception seems to be that of a man somnambulant with guilt from the first, waking only to occasional extremes of laughing sadism or cringing terror. These are effective but they are very occasional. They are belied too by his physical glamour, which is unchanging. 

Nobody else in the cast seems able to get through to him. They try various methods. Frances Tomelty’s Lady Macbeth- almost a Fourth Witch- goes for sex, but elicits hardly a twitch in return. Brian Blessed’s roaring Banquo slaps his noble partner’s back a great deal. All, resting to the rhetorical vacuum at the centre, try helplessly to be conversational; to poor Lennox’s aggrieved ‘Our chimneys were blown down’ would be ‘Well fancy that.’

Dudley Sutton’s Macduff is a bit wild; when Macbeth’s very convincing severed head was brought in at the end it looks so convincing one feared that somewhere in the wings, Mr Sutton had lost control. Even as it was, Murphy’s Law ran riot on the first night; lines were muffed and furniture bumped into. In the shambles John Tordoff’s businesslike Third Murderer survived best.