The Young Vic has made a name for itself in recent years for its bold interpretations and inventive staging – and this performance of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth is nothing less than you would expect of a Carrie Cracknell and Lucy Guerin directed production. It aims to take Macbeth in a direction it has never been seen before, posing the idea that Duncan is a tyrant and that Macbeth’s deeds are a coup and for the good of Scotland – more a moral act than one of ambition on Macbeth’s part.
Lizzie Clachan’s set is a narrowing underground tunnel which works well for the war scenes and providing a claustrophobic feel, but is too static and confining for a great deal of the play.
The interpretation seems to reference Abu Ghraib, with victims made subject to transparent hoods before their execution, and in the final scene Macbeth is found hiding underground, Saddam Hussein style. We see body bags, including that of children and torture by electrocution played out in what is an incredibly dark performance – but no real context is truly clear.
Lucy Guerin’s choreography is slick, shows great vision and is impeccably performed – with the exception of the battle scene dances which look clumsy – but is often irrelevant and outstays its welcome, slowing the pace of the piece immensely. Ideas seem to jar against each other as the dance and drama interweave becoming more of a battle for prominence than a happy marriage.
The twitching, contorting weird sisters, mannequin like, dressed in skin toned body stockings, are ever present throughout the production: reflecting the disturbed nature of Macbeth’s mind. Macduff’s children appear running around, dressed as ghosts, before they are doomed their untimely end and Banquo speaks a great deal of the lines from the later scenes as a ghost from the side of the stage.
John Heffernan is not your typical brutish Macbeth but he speaks Shakespeare’s text with great clarity and sensitivity, really making it his own: his neurotic take often feels like it belongs in a completely different interpretation of the play. His Macbeth soliloquys are clear, nuanced and rescue the dignity of the piece somewhat with his excellently performed decent to darkness. Anna Maxwell Martin is best in the scenes with her husband, showing the vaulting ambition of Lady Macbeth. Left alone she has a tendency to underplay at times and doesn’t hit us with the full force you expect of Lady M. On too many occasions speaks her lines so quickly that we are not able to discern what she is saying at all, as if taking her husband’s words a little too literally “then ’twere well it were done quickly.”
This production is bold, furious, incredibly macabre and individually slickly performed for the most part: yet all the elements do not come together, resulting in a confusing mismatch of ideas that sucks the potency out Shakespeare’s tale. Running at two hours without an interval, this Macbeth is incoherent and perhaps too brazen and absurd for its own good – on the whole underwhelming. ★★★☆☆ Sam Chipman 26th January 2016
