MACBETH. To 24 May.

Mold.

MACBETH
by William Shakespeare Clwyd Theatr Cymru (Anthony Hopkins Theatre) To 24 May 2008.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm.
Runs 1hr 55min No interval.

TICKETS: 0845 330 3565.
www.clwyd-theatr-cymru.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 17 May.

Dark and bleak, yet a brilliant, revelatory production.
There could hardly be a greater contrast between Rupert Goold’s 2007 Chichester/Minerva Macbeth and Terry Hands’ Mold revival; in critical attention for one thing. Goold worked by accretion, adding a context, in a production that (interval aside) ran an hour longer than Hands’ stripped-down, absorbing account. There’s a plain black stage, just a flaming torch at its back, the only colour in set or lights being Birnam’s green forestry encroaching as nemesis arrives.

The play’s reference to “fate and metaphysical aid” is key. The Witches play their short opening scene twice, first as they stab the (very) “bloody man” reporting the battle, again as they aid a near-defeated Macduff, doing-for Macbeth. Again they promise to meet again, with the next Macbeth. And Oliver Ryan’s Malcolm, who in the England scenes and in making his co-victors bow to him at the end, indicates he could be close to the vices he ascribes to himself, faces a silent, returned Fleance.

So, history’s set to repeat itself as power swishes around. Banquo shows more interest in the prophecies than is healthy, even his determination to keep his honour having a hollow ring.

The screams of the murdered Macduffs continue over the following scene’s reference to new widows and orphans howling, part of the overall fast-pulse whirl. It’s punctuated by the brief scenes where Lords comment on matters, as they slowly cross the stage in narrow corridors of light, acquiring the dream-like quality of oases in a nightmare. These scenes become almost hallucinatory, at one point acquiring the bitter scepticism that also infects Macbeth, at another Macduff’s voice continuing after he’s disappeared from view.

Doubtless economy helped determine the voice-overs of English troops, but it concentrates attention on Macbeth’s state. Initially a stalwart soldier, he signals his internal change by moving to the stage’s front edge, almost tipping off it by the final soliloquy, before dying right there. Hands signals his separation from humanity by contrasting his isolation with departing groups.

Vocally, Owen Teale’s Macbeth moves from a strong-voiced soldier to a light, tightened fear over what he’s about to do, then becoming near-strangulated, his voice dropping from the quiet realisation of “Glamis hath murdered – sleep” to the gravelly depth of the phrase’s echo, “Macbeth hath murdered sleep”.

Visually, Teale’s Macbeth moves from dark-clad warrior to black vest then, as he loses his mind, overturning furniture and smashing ‘Banquo’s’ chair, to a bare-chest. At the end, he’s heavily clad, as if clothing keeps him from contact with the world. This is the Macbeth who looks at Young Siward’s body almost pityingly before snapping his neck as if it’s the fate of any attacker born of woman.

When the prospect of his first murder drains Macbeth’s voice, Vivien Parry’s Lady Macbeth provided vocal force. She’s no monster till fate and events make her so, and there’s plenty of anxiety at the murder, till she finds something to do.

And she finds her husband’s increasing detachment puzzling. She runs down as if to prompt him when he’s asked why he killed Duncan’s guards, then looks back fearfully towards him as, after her faint, she’s led away.

It’s in their moment of newly-crowned glory, dressed in white, that she’s dismissed by her husband. After the banquet fiasco, she huddles in her seat, screaming in panic fort the lords to leave, cowering as Macbeth looms half-naked over her, a ravening beast. As she twists distractedly away across the stage, alone, her final suicidal madness is already approaching; sleep alone is no longer sufficiently strong a seasoning for her.

Teale and Parry are both excellent. But finally it’s Hands’ conception, with its hurtling madness paused only by the few brief scenes of nightmarish contemplation and with no promise of final resolution in a world where human ambition rarely gives society a rest, that makes this dark world with its bleak shafts of light, inside and outside the mind, so brilliantly revelatory.

Witch/Gentlewoman: Jenny Livsey.
Witch/Lady Macduff: Victoria Pugh.
Witch: Catrin Aaron.
Duncan: John Atterbury.
Malcolm: Oliver Ryan.
Donalbain: Richard Shackley.
Macduff: Nicholas Beveney.
Ross: Simon Armstrong.
Lennox: Bradley Freeguard.
Macbeth: Owen Teale.
Banquo: Joshua Richards.
Lady Macbeth: Vivien Parry.
Seyton: Simon Nehan.
Fleance: Francois Pandolfo.
Doctor: Robert Page.
Son of Lady Macduff: Olukayode Famoriyo/Dominic Mazhindu.
Daughter of Lady Macduff: Cheri King/Charlotte Price.
Young Siward: Rupert Hands.

Director/Lighting: Terry Hands.
Designer: Timothy O’Brien.

2008-05-18 14:19:47