Macbeth (National Theatre)
Olivier Theatre, NT. February 26, 2018
The first of two Macbeths this season. There’s one at the NT directed by Rufus Norris and there’s one at the RSC directed by Polly Findlay (recently seen at the NT with Beginning, now in the West End).
I had very high hopes for this, the Shakespeare I studied for GCSE and haunted my teens. My hopes were dashed.
Was this Macbeth meets Mad Max? Macbeth at the abattoir? Macbeth in a world of single-use plastic? I really didn’t like it. Maybe I’m missing something but it felt too obvious. I also really really really didn't like the plastic babies tied to the set to the poles/trees. It was too creepy and felt like an unsubtle dig at Lady M’s lack of children and the killing of the Macduff brood.
And I really didn’t understand the back of the witches heads looking like Chucky from Child’s Play. No idea what that was all about, it completely passed me by as I’m not a watcher of horror films but it felt a bit simplistic. And those I chatted with after didn’t like them either.
Usually I love Rory Kinnear. His finest hour was on the Olivier stage as Iago. Yet here is seems out of sorts and the delivery as the chaos he creates spirals becomes stacatto.
However Anne Marie Duff was MAGNIFICENT as Lady M. Her passion for her husband, her ambition, her strength and frailty plunging her into the depths of depression and despair towards madness are astonishingly portrayed. She delivers some of the most famous speeches in a way that made them seem more real, more clear, more vivid. Outstanding stuff.
2.5/5 Duff shines through the plastic as Lady M.
