If directing Shakespeare is about creating a consistent world on stage, this production by Carrie Cracknell and choreographer Lucy Guerin certainly succeeds. The action is confined to a sinister, V-shaped tunnel; body bags and heads swathed in polythene hoods provide a visual motif; and dance, especially from the Weird Sisters, is used to establish mood. But I felt that the relentless physical movement, to electro artist Clark’s pounding score, often pre-empted the actors’ responsibility to convey mental anguish.
The production also has its oddities. Why is Duncan, who “hath borne his faculties so meek”, played as a torture-sanctioning figure in dark glasses? The lines telling us that the Macbeths’ residence “hath a pleasant seat” are cut to present us with something resembling Bluebeard’s Castle, full of secret chambers. Textual tampering also flattens the surrounding characters, so that Malcolm loses his self-accusation, designed to test Macduff, in the England scene.
But the two leads are well played. Anna Maxwell Martin is an alarmingly cool, svelte Lady Macbeth who only reveals her secret self in the sleepwalking scene, where she touchingly cradles an imagined baby in her arms. John Heffernan is also an ostensibly tough, battle-hardened Macbeth who uncorks his massive insecurity after he has achieved power, neurotically banging a table as he tells us “to be thus is nothing but to be safely thus”. It is not Heffernan’s fault that Macbeth’s climactic sense of desolation is upstaged by the frenzied collective dancing.
There is no doubt that the Weird Sisters (Ana Beatriz Meireles, Jessie Oshodi and Clemmie Sveaas in fawn bodystockings) are central to this production. But, while they dance expertly, and periodically assume other roles such as Macduff’s children, I question their prominence: if they are such pivotal figures, rather than simply embodiments of the hero’s darkest desires, that inevitably reduces Macbeth’s potency. What we are left with is a viscerally exciting production, but one in which movement takes precedence over exploration of meaning.
- At the Young Vic, London, until 23 January. Box office: 020-7922 2923. Then touring.
