Macbeth (Northern Broadsides)

Those of us who know Willophobia – a debilitating condition resulting
directly from prolonged exposure to non-consensual pre-adolescent textual
analysis – are all too familiar with the quasi-catatonic cerebral paralysis
induced by voiced Shakespeare.

Which is why we must cherish Northern Broadsides. Quite apart from being
almost the only ensemble company left in the UK (which, given its enlightened
policy of regularly re-visiting the same pool of actors, brings it close to
being a permanent company – and all the better for it), Barrie Rutter‘s
troupe is the perfect antidote to badly taught Shakespeare. You don’t get
the reverence, and arguably, you don’t get the depth of psychological probing
that the posher houses offer. You don’t get the scenic frills or the
eccentric new perspectives on text either.

What you get instead is superb clarity,
exemplary pace and physically vigorous story-telling. Shakespeare is
suddenly gloriously accessible. (The “northern voice” of which Rutter used
to speak, and which made potential audiences wary of “the Bard in broad
Yorkshire”, is no longer an article of faith: productions these days contain
a fair degree of RP speaking.)

The Broadsides Macbeth has the Scottish court in greatcoats like a bunch
of modern Balkan warlords. All appears manly bonhomie until the ageing king
makes his son Malcolm Prince of Cumberland and thus bestows the succession on
him. It is a moment made suddenly electric by the strapping, and hitherto
loyal and compliant, Macbeth, who has been brooding, not unhappily, on the
predictions of the three weird sisters and who sees the cookie being stolen
from his grasp. His wife knows nothing of the sisters’ words but is
convinced that the throne is his birthright and channels his vengeful
instincts with understated efficiency.

As played by Helen Sheals, this
Lady Macbeth is a brisk and manipulative office manager in a sexy little
black frock (exchanged at night for a short black nightie, in which
her sleepwalk betrays not so much guilt or remorse as irritation at a
botched strategy). Andrew Vincent‘s Macbeth’s miring in evil is a gradual
and desperate fall, clinging to the sisters’ prophecies as they fail him one
after another.

Andrew Pollard is a forceful presence as Banquo, alive and
dead, and Richard Standing carries superbly that most shattering moment
when Macduff learns of the slaughter of his wife and children: it’s like
watching a large granite rock crumble slowly and silently into a tiny mound
of sand. And Rutter himself makes a guest appearance as Hecate –
hitherto a goddess, but now referred to as “he” – peering through a pencil
spot and spouting Middleton’s runic doggerel for all the world like a
well-fed giraffe.

It’s a beefy production, punctuated with percussive on-stage music – the
ubiquitous Broadsides kettledrum, augmented by a sort of football supporters’
band of raucous brass – set in and around a square pit lined with a massive
deep orange sheepskin rug (in olden RSC days, it would have been a sandpit!)
and bounded by an underlit catwalk. Bloody intrigue is physically at the
heart of the action.

Shakespeare – indeed, theatre – doesn’t come much more invigorating
than this.

– Ian Watson (reviewed at Dean Clough’s Viaduct Theatre in Halifax)