Reviews

Macbeth (Shakespeare's Globe)

Iqbal Khan’s Gothic production runs until October 1

"When shall we three meet again? In thunder, lightning or in rain?" Mother nature is providing plenty of accurate weather for this Macbeth – but Iqbal Khan‘s production produces four witches. Weird indeed.

It’s one of many choices here that feel wilfully perverse. Yes, the four actresses are arguably less playing three witches than manipulating the dismembered puppets which represent them – sometimes with uncanny creepiness, sometimes with B-movie wonkiness. But that’s analysis. The instinctive response is: someone here can’t count.

The thought uncharitably pops into my head again after we see Macduff’s child – singular – murdered, before hearing his father wailing repeatedly about "all" his children.

And children are important in this production. Khan introduces a very young boy onstage, Lord and Lady Macbeth' son. It’s an interesting move in a play obsessed with children and childlessness, parental love and unnatural brutality. But it’s usually assumed the Macbeths lost a child, as there are no lines or stage directions for one. Why would Macbeth be so obsessed with Banquo’s issue but never mention or seek to protect his own?

Still, there is potential here to shed fascinating new light – on Lady Macbeth, for instance (is she a tiger mother? A neglectful one?) But Khan fails to say much with his invention. At the end, the boy toddles in and sits on the throne. A chilling reminder of the cyclical nature of violence? Perhaps – except the adorable actor is so very young, there’s little sense of the damage inflicted by his witnessing war; his cheekily cute throne-nabbing gets a round of "awws" instead.

In a production that somehow lumbers on for almost three hours, the head-scratching choices sadly outweigh the positives. Ray Fearon makes a lusty, battle-ready Macbeth, but also persuasively marks his moral journey, from conscience-troubled to brawny fury and bloody-mindedness. But I never quite believed his relationship with Lady Macbeth: sex and violence seem less erotically entwined than awkward bedfellows.

And Tara Fitzgerald‘s Lady M is a disappointment: her lines are sometimes barely audible, and she’s a brittle, bickering, giggling thing. Her losing the plot is believable (if oddly played for laughs); that her fearsome ambition could drive the plot to kill a king is not. Nadia Albina is notable as the porter, delivering a bawdy, physical turn that also sneaks in modern references to Donald Trump – but those knock-knock jokes are still hard work.

Music by Jocelyn Pook is a highlight. She has a superbly spooky voice, and sings the witches verse in strange harmony and discord with others vocalists. Accompanied by groaning strings, chiming hand bells and woodwind, the music strikes an atmospheric, faintly Celtic air. Add copious amounts of smoke – and real rain – and we’re in thick of a Gothic, glowering Scotland.

This is matched with the scarlet-velvet and black lace of Joan O’Clery’s sexy-goth costume design, neither modern nor historical alongside leather jerkins and great coats. And while some of the supernatural elements can be effective, others are risible. A prophesying baby sprouting out of a cracked egg shell actually made me spurt with laughter, it’s mouth dropping open like a ventriloquist’s dummy in a cheap horror movie.

I ended up watching Macbeth after the referendum, which made the play pertinent in new ways: a country convulsing, back-stabbing, leaders who don’t know when to let go, the unintended consequences of false political predictions, even the sense of the bloody weather matching the political storms. In our own moment of sudden massive unrest, Macbeth speaks strongly, even if this particular production never quite adds up.

Macbeth runs at Shakespeare's Globe until 1 October.