Lady In The Dark | Benedict Campbell and Diana D’Aquila light a candle to curse the darkness in Macbeth.
MACBETH
Directed by Peter Hinton. Written by William Shakespeare. Starring Benedict Campbell and Diane D’Aquila. To Mar 2. Maclab Theatre (The Citadel). Tickets available at the Citadel box office (425-1820).
Macbeth has always been my favourite of Shakespeare’s plays, largely because it was the first one I ever saw staged, and the production availed itself of all manner of beguiling stagecraft to blow my schoolboy mind. It’s also the shortest and bloodiest of the Bard’s tragedies, with lots of witches and ghosts and a hit parade of soliloquies from “Is this a dagger I see before me?” to “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow....”
Aside from all the razzle-dazzle, what really impressed me about that production was how the actors delineated the human qualities of proud, flawed Macbeth and his ambitious wife through all that iambic pentameter. The great tragedy of Macbeth is not just that noble people lose their souls in the quest for power, but that they do so with their eyes wide open to the monstrous decisions they must make.
As such, I was quite excited to see the National Arts Centre production of Macbeth now playing at the Citadel’s Maclab Theatre. A national theatre troupe must have the resources and the talent to put up a crackling production of the tragedy, and I was intrigued by the decision to set Macbeth against the backdrop of the Second World War. How would 20th-century warfare and the shadow of fascism inform the themes and character relationships as Shakespeare conceived them?
The NAC’s Macbeth, while remarkable for the unearthly atmosphere it sustains, doesn’t completely reconcile the text with its new setting. There are spiffy uniforms and bayonets and witches dressed up like war orphans, but these choices didn’t always serve a deeper understanding of what’s going on between the war hero Macbeth (Benedict Campbell), his scheming wife (Diane D’Aquila), and the officers who stand between them and absolute power.
The shadowy, spare stage design, which relies on a few chairs and a table or two set against a wall of filthy factory windows, is effectively stark and nightmarish, isolating characters in pools of harsh light while giving killers cover as they ply their dark deeds. The murder of Lady Macduff and her son is all the ghastlier when you see it played out under a spotlight next to a mundane armchair and reading lamp.
But despite the ample space on Maclab’s thrust stage, there are times where this Macbeth feels constrained, stiff, and prosaic, the players rooted to their marks while the leads pace and emote. And even the leads occasionally find themselves pinned down by curious staging, as when Macbeth reckons with the horror of his wife’s suicide while lolling on his back underneath a desk.
In fact, a few of Macbeth’s key scenes feel less momentous than they should. The WWII theme tends to muddle the impact of the play’s supernatural elements, though other staging choices seem curious as well. Macbeth’s violent betrayal of his friend Banquo transpires almost completely in the dark while the rest of the cast rearranges the stage. When Banquo’s bloodstained ghost pops up from under the Macbeths’ dining table like some J-horror ghoul, there was some muffled laughter from the audience. Macbeth’s second visit to the witches, which he makes in a wifebeater and pyjama bottoms, is interrupted by a distracting shower of half-inflated red utility balls.
Campbell, who looks like a slightly older, depilated Chris Craddock, cuts a commanding starship-captain figure in the lead, while D’Aquila’s Lady Macbeth appears half-mad from the outset with the foreknowledge of her own doom. These outsized portrayals are perhaps on par with the play’s grand thematic intentions but lack the glimmer of humanity that make the fall of the Macbeths feel like tragedy. Ruminations on the corrupting effects of power are all to the good, but they’re just one small part of why Macbeth resonates with audiences 400 years after it was written.
