by William Shakespeare
Directed by Des McAnuff
At the Festival Theatre
May 22-October 31, 2009
In 1936, Orson Welles directed
what came to be known as the “voodoo” Macbeth, setting it, with an all-black
cast, in 19th century Haiti, in the court of Henri Christophe.
The castle had an exotic jungle backdrop, and a hundred real voodoo drummers
from Sierra Leone to serve as chorus, led by an authentic witch-doctor. It
was a startlingly new interpretation, colourful in décor and costuming, and
the lighting marked off the play’s rhythms by dynamic transitions. Most of
the critical reaction seemed to favour the technical aspects of the
production rather than the actors’ interpretations, but that version has
survived in theatre history probably far more significantly than what can be
predicted for Des McAnuff’s sorry production at Stratford. This one is set
in an Africa of white colonizers—an Africa where cutlasses, pistols, rifles,
grenades, machine guns, and helicopters replace swords and arrows, and where
jeeps replace horses. There are watchtowers with sentries, and photographers
are on hand to record highlights at court and on the battlefield. And, of
course, there are videos to make unnecessary visual comment for directors
unworthy of Shakespeare. The rival armies are virtually indistinguishable in
their modern camouflage and khakis, and where the usurping royal couple cuts
across race (the lady is black, the thane white), as do other characters.
Banquo is black and so are Macduff and Lady Macduff. Duncan is white and so
are Lennox, Ross, and the drunken Porter. If this mixed colour casting is
meant to be an allegory of something, it is hard to say of what exactly.
Perhaps it is simply a visual correlative to the idea of white colonial
power.
McAnuff’s blocking and ideas are often strange. When Macbeth finishes his quite unstirring dagger vision soliloquy, he passes Lady Macbeth on her entrance down a ramp. Banquo’s “Thou hast it all” begins while attendants are setting up a table for a press conference. The ghosts that Macbeth sees are rendered on video screens. And it is clear the director loves the sight of gore on stage. He even brings on the blood-soaked body of Duncan, lest we forget that the play is one of Shakespeare’s bloodiest.
The acting leaves a lot to be desired. Colm Feore’s Macbeth is a hollow thing, full of sound and some fury signifying little. Lean enough to make a splendid Cassius (which I believe he has played), Feore often looks and sounds lobotomized, except in Macbeth’s monologue on sleeplessness, where the actor’s hysteria is never convincing. If Feore has supped full on horrors, his repast must certainly have been sparse. There’s simply no evolution or devolution in the character. His “Tomorrow” speech is a recitation rather than an expression of his deep disillusionment, and his performance has almost no power.
His lady is much better but still
not enough to fully inhabit her role. Yanna McIntosh should have been
stunning—and she does have some stunning moments—but she, too, recites when
she should be in a supernatural spell. Her sleepwalking scene surprised me
by her swift movement, for it is almost as though she were on a drug to
induce hyperactivity.
Geraint Wyn Davies is a fine Duncan, and Tom Rooney an excellent Porter, though not as vivid as Mervyn Blake’s of many seasons ago. The witches (one blind for an ironic note) are too downscaled to be effective. I liked Kolton Stewart as the Macduff son, as well as Banquo’s murderers (Sean Arbuckle, Peter Hutt, Bruce Godfree), but these were insufficient consolations for the huge flaws in the production—the chief of which is McAnuff’s naïve view of the play as a nation’s bloody struggle to free itself of colonial power. Somehow McAnuff has mixed up his Franz Fanon with Shakespeare, to the diminution of the world’s greatest playwright.
photos: David Hou
pic 1: Yanna McIntosh (Lady Macbeth), Colm Feore (Macbeth)
pic 2: Colm Feore (Macbeth)
pic 3: Macbeth with the Three Weird Sisters
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