The Night Heir: Macbeth works surprisingly well as an al fresco tragedy

Macbeth
Canadian Stage: Shakespeare in High Park
The National Post

It begins on a blasted heath and ends on a field of battle; still, I doubt many people think of Macbeth as an outdoors play. Like most of the other tragedies, it's a play that the Dream in High Park, like most of the other pastoral Shakespeare operations, has avoided like - well, like Macbeth himself trying to keep out of the way of Macduff. "My soul is too much charged with blood of thine already": High Park has the blood of any number of lighter Shakespeare plays on its lawns already: plays that were the victims of half-baked direction, haphazard casting, and a general confusion of the popular with the patronizing. Ker Wells' production of Macbeth is, in this context, a double revelation; not only does it show that you can do a tragedy alfresco but it really is a production, with a definite view of the play. It is, in some respects, a perverse view; but it's carried out with intelligence and imagination, and cast, for the most part, with actors who are equal to their roles.

The major exception in the latter category is, unfortunately, Macbeth himself: Hugh Thompson progresses conscientiously through the lines without putting an individual stamp on any of them and without making us feel the heat inside the murderer's head. He is something of an automaton, which may even be the intention; he's the only Macbeth I've seen who, when he gets to "tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" illustrates the words with some rather effective strutting and fretting of his own. The production's thrust, intentional or not, is to absolve him of much individual blame. He's a soldier in a militaristic society; what else would you expect? That seems to be the reasoning.

So we start with an elaborately choreographed battle, the witches emerging from beneath the corpses to perform their opening ritual. They speak in sex-kittenish voices, rendered more mockingly sinister by the amplification; it's unfortunate that the same sound system has a similarly inhuman, and less felicitous, effect on the other characters; about the only actor to escape the boom of doom is Kevin MacDonald, an understated and even humorous Banquo. Duncan, whom the script keeps describing as some kind of saint, is played as a bloodthirsty martinet, who can't wait to hear that execution has been done on Cawdor; indeed he asks twice.

His son Malcolm, in an arresting performance by Greg Gale, is a cool gum-chewing customer, whose proclamation as heir-apparent is one of the production's best moments; he takes it in his stride, while Macbeth goes to pieces. Most startling of all, the Thane of Ross (Thomas Olajide), normally a mere well-intentioned bringer of bad news, here becomes Macbeth's hit-man and an all-around time-server. He's the Third Murderer at the killing of Banquo, subsequently and non-textually bumping off the First. (That's one theatrical cliche I would love to see the back of: the tyrant who lets none of his instruments escape alive.) He bears false tidings of comfort to Lady Macduff, preparatory to assisting at her murder too. He then switches to Malcolm's side, on hearing how big an army he's raised. In fact he displaces Macbeth as the true villain of the piece, which may be one reason why the supposed central performance fails to catch fire.

The production's other, and more legitimate, angle is its emphasis on the Macbeths' childlessness. This oddly makes no impact in the scenes between the couple themselves, but its implications are chillingly apparent elsewhere. Macbeth plays the jolly uncle with Banquo's son Fleance, just a few scenes before arranging for the boy to be killed. The bloodstained child who figures among the witches' apparitions is given haunting prominence. Macbeth himself turns up at the Macduff family massacre, and at its end makes off with one of the children; I doubt that he intends to adopt him. This makes a terrific buildup for the scene in which Macduff hears the news (from Ross, of course) and Ryan Hollyman plays it most powerfully. Excellent, too, is Philippa Domville's Lady Macbeth, switching in an uncanny instant from wifely exasperation at her husband's failure to pick up the daggers where she left them (if she's told him once, she's told him a thousand times) to the pang of conscience at Duncan's resemblance to her father; if I've seen the latter moment better done I don't recall it. In fact one of the great strengths of Wells' production is its alertness to the echoes in the text. He sometimes juggles the order of things to bring this out, but it's subtle and allowable. Thus, when the drunken Porter (Hume Baugh, not quite as drunk as all that, indeed promoted to something of a commentator) goes through his litany of the damned, Macbeth appears pat at the mention of the equivocator.

The evening's final success is the setting itself. We're used to the fall of night bestowing magic on even the unworthiest of open-air comedy productions. It turns out to work for tragedy as well; certainly for this one which reaches its climax in a castle surrounded by a forest. Though I regret to say that there is no visible suggestion of Birnam Wood marching towards Dunsinane; the High Park trees stand stubbornly still.