Productions of Macbeth come thick and fast. Polly Findlay’s RSC version is much superior to the visually ugly one at the National, and boasts a strong cast headed by Christopher Eccleston and Niamh Cusack. But, while the production bulges with bright ideas, I sometimes feel that Findlay is not simply directing the play but also delivering a lecture on it.
Time is obviously a concept that threads through the text. Lest we miss the point, a digital clock is prominent on the upper level of Fly Davis’s design and, having registered Duncan’s murder, counts down to Macbeth’s demise. Key phrases – such as Lady Macbeth’s sense of “the future in the instant” – are projected on to an upstage screen.
Since this a play to which children, or the lack of them, is central, the three witches are incarnated in the form of young girls: a nice idea that underscores a point made by film critic Peter Bradshaw in the programme that Macbeth is the first horror film, but it means the witches’ ominous words go for little.
One idea that does work well is the ubiquity of the Porter. Not since Thomas De Quincey wrote a famous essay, On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth (1823), has the character seemed so pivotal. As played by Michael Hodgson, who is on stage throughout, he fulfils multiple roles: a creepy caretaker who hoovers the carpet on which the bulk of the action takes place; a sinister third murderer; an observer who chalks up Macbeth’s escalating murders; and a symbol of fate who, in the final scene, points Macduff in Macbeth’s direction. In Findlay’s interpretation, the play is seen from the Porter’s perspective.
I still think we should be more fixated on Macbeth himself, whom Eccleston plays perfectly creditably. When Lady M tells her husband to “sleek o’er your rugged looks”, she hits on the ideal adjective. Eccleston is every inch the vigorous, rugged soldier, with so little concern for diplomacy that Duncan is forced to wipe the blood off his hand after Macbeth has kissed it, and so ambitious that he presumptuously steps forward when Duncan names his heir. Eccleston also has a good moment when, once crowned, he beats his head on the ground in frustration at the tormented insecurity of kingship. But, while he gives us a robust account of a man of action whose instinct is to kill all opposition, his speaking of the verse lacks irony or light and shade.
Cusack invests Lady Macbeth with a febrile energy; the downside is that Findlay never lets her be still, so that much of what she says loses its weight. The idea is palpably that Lady M is driven mad by her exclusion from her husband’s tyranny – we even see her listening to a tape of the murder of Macduff’s children. But it is carried too far in the sleepwalking scene, where Cusack descends into the stalls to to invite a surprised patron to “give me your hand”.
There are many good things in this production. Edward Bennett movingly registers Macduff’s grief, Luke Newberry’s Malcolm is shadowed by impending danger and Raphael Sowole is a sturdily watchful Banquo. The action also moves at a tremendous lick. This is a lively production in which there has been much throwing about of brains, yet it all too often advertises its ideas instead of allowing them to emerge subliminally.
• At the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 18 September. Box office: 01789 403493. Broadcast live in cinemas on 11 April. At Barbican theatre, London, 15 October-18 January 2019.
