GoKawiilIf you’ve never seen a bad production of Macbeth, you’ve probably never seen a production of Macbeth. Famously cursed, the play has inspired perhaps the gravest superstition in the superstitious demimonde of Western theater: Every actor, director, stage manager, set designer, tech, and seamstress knows that one must never speak the name of Shakespeare’s Scottish play inside a theater. Partly this is derived from the story itself, brimful as it is with witchcraft, wickedness, and the violation of sacred bonds. Partly it is inspired by the misfortunes visited upon numerous historical productions. Those involved with various stagings across the centuries have suffered breaks, burns, falls, riots, and heart attacks. There have been a startling number of deaths, onstage and off, going back—as legend has it—to the boy playing Lady Macbeth in the very first production. And partly the superstition arises from the difficulties of the play’s script.
Among playwrights, certain scripts are considered “actor-proof”—dialogical contraptions so tightly paced, dramatically propulsive, and self-evidently motivated that even a lackluster performance, direction, or design cannot snuff out the narrative power of the writing. The truly actor-proof play, like the truly unsinkable ship, may not exist, but if there is such a thing as a script that can’t help but succeed in production, the Scottish play might be its opposite. Should every element of a production come together just right, Macbeth can be electrifying. But if even one bit goes awry, the whole thing falls to pieces.
What makes Macbeth so hard to stage well? Setting aside the challenges of producing any four-hundred-year-old play, there are several problems built into the script. First, it’s filled with magic. It opens on a coven of witches who speak in riddles and spells and in so doing set a semi-supernatural frame around all of the play’s events, which include Macbeth’s vision of a floating dagger, Lady Macbeth’s vision of blood that won’t wash out, the ghost of Banquo, and an elaborate sequence of prophetic symbols, spirits, and harbingers conjured for Macbeth’s edification in the witch’s lair. There is also the matter of the witches’ prophecies, delivered throughout the play, all of which come true, though often in ways that leave ambiguous their meanings.
Precisely how the audience is meant to receive all of this magic is unclear. Some instances, such as Lady Macbeth’s vision, seem to be mere hallucination, while others, such as the procession of Banquo’s line of future kings, are presented as objectively perceptible manifestations meant to be accepted by both characters and audience. That no one but Macbeth sees Banquo’s ghost and the “air-drawn dagger” might suggest that these are psychological rather than spiritual phenomena. The characters themselves disagree, however, about what counts as magic and whether any of it should be believed, which complicates the problem of the intended audience response. Too much ambiguity regarding diegetic onionskins might try the audience’s patience, especially when the production is tasked with the additional work of preserving the suspension of disbelief with regard to onstage special effects. The delicate orchestration of these interlocking variables in a theatrical production is possible, but only barely.
The second major challenge for any production of Macbeth is the play’s tone. The script is among Shakespeare’s shortest, and the scope and complexity of the story give the audience little chance to digest all of the plot developments. The abruptness with which characters shiftfrom unshakeable loyalty to blackhearted villainy or from cynical realism to hallucinatory ecstasy can risk producing a comic effect in the midst of what might otherwise be a scene of terrible gravity. And when the characters display ambivalence about their choices, the wobbliness of their commitments can seem less tortured than incompetent. When Macbeth returns from Duncan’s murder to confess the crime to his wife, Lady Macbeth is appalled to find her absent-minded husband still in possession of the bloody daggers. The many references to drinking that appear between Duncan’s arrival at Inverness and the discovery of his body invite suspicion that the Macbeths might even have been drunk when they committed the murder. Much has been made of the Porter’s comic soliloquy, coming as it does in the midst of one of the play’s darkest moments, but that darkness has already been confused by a series of mishaps and half-measures on the part of the murderers. The script itself does not specify the proper tone with which to present such moments to the audience.
The third and perhaps greatest problem presented by Macbeth is that of motivation. Within the play’s first few scenes, we are introduced to Macbeth by other characters who speak enthusiastically about his incomparable virtue, but we’ve scarcely met the man himself before he starts to contemplate the murder of his king and benefactor. While Macbeth is still in the company of the messengers who bring him news of Duncan’s gratitude, he is already agonizing over the prospect of dispatching his royal cousin:
My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
Shakes so my single state of man that function
Is smothered in surmise, and nothing is
But what is not.
... continue reading