Iqbal Khan’s production is full of what one character calls “strange invention”. The Macbeths, so obsessed with childlessness, are endowed with a young son. The weird sisters, all four of them, resemble an avant-garde puppet troupe who spend much of their time making shapes out of severed limbs. Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy, which plays best without an intermission, is stretched out to three hours. There are good things in Khan’s production but they are surrounded by an aura of perverse oddity.
The strongest feature of the evening is the relationship of the central couple. The first word applied to Macbeth is “brave”, and Ray Fearon presents us plausibly with a martial hero whose whole being is tied up with a defiant masculinity: he is an adoring husband stung into murder by his wife’s taunts. When, in the final moments, Macduff calls him “coward”, he paces the auditorium in seething anger. Fearon also reminds us that Macbeth, like Richard III, can never enjoy the power he has criminally seized.
Tara Fitzgerald, although her verse-speaking sometimes lacks Fearon’s clarity, reinforces the idea that this is a play about a passionate marriage by feverishly pawing her warrior-husband, flinging wine in his face when he temporarily abandons the idea of killing their house guest and credibly going to pieces when she finds herself marginalised.
It remains, however, a bewildering evening. Sam Cox plays Duncan as a whimsically eccentric figure who prostrates himself before Macbeth. Nadia Albina is encouraged to turn the Porter into a showstopping variety turn full of topical gags about Donald Trump and referendums. Jocelyn Pook’s music, while eerily atmospheric, is overly dominant: typically, the second half’s prophecies of the weird sisters lose much of their meaning, since they are sung by a high soprano with instrumental accompaniment. And I am still puzzled by the presence of the Macbeths’ child. If he is real, why is Macbeth jealous of Banquo’s son? If he is a fantasy, how come everyone else sees him?
- At Shakespeare’s Globe, London, until 1 October. Box office: 020-7401 9919.
