A BARREN, unwelcoming sports bar or social club somewhere on the fringes of Glasgow’s sectarian underbelly is hardly the ideal place for a night out and certainly on the face of it not somewhere you’d expect to find a gem as polished as this.
But Daniel Raggett’s gritty, visceral staging of this perennially dark play has the style and panache to take such an earthy theme and stay with it all the way through. The RSC has staged a multitude of terrific Macbeth’s down its many years but few could match this for closeness and sheer brutal realism.
We’re in gangland central and the back-stabbing street wars are fought not with claymores but with clawhammers, Stanley knives and baseball bats. Harsh environments breed harsh people and the whole company gets stuck into a vibe a few degrees to the bad side of Taggart.
Characters are chopped wholesale and lines unceremoniously condensed in the pursuit of an immediacy and a clarity of purpose which really makes this production appeal. This is one of Shakespeare’s most action-packed plays with the action turned up even higher.
It doesn’t stint on the brutal either. Death comes right there on the pub floor and not at the end of the traditional long sword. The sight of children being led into a darkened room by someone holding a hammer pushes the reality of the murderous nature of the play firmly into the horribly real.
Set inescapably within this awful place, Sam Heughan’s Macbeth is an imposing figure, physically dominant but exhibiting all the inner doubts and instabilities which make the character one of the Bard’s most notably three dimensional figures. Hard Glaswegian but with a softer edge, it’s a performance which brings a refreshing touch in many areas and is only occasionally undermined by an insistence on adding stage business where words would suffice.
Perhaps the greatest shift in character lies with Lady Macbeth. Lia Williams has the same hard edge when needed but the drop to her inner persona and the vulnerability not normally so evident is vast. Shelving the accepted norm, she is present at more key moments and exhibits an unexpected tenderness in the face of ruthless violence which turns the normal dynamic of the couple on its head. In a truly shocking innovation she also does not die offstage and her exit is an image that will remain with audiences for a long time.
The company excels throughout. Strong accents and vivid characterisations, with perhaps a special mention for Michael Abubakar who handles the concatenation of roles perfectly and seems to be a lurking presence throughout.
Neatly designed by Anna Reid within this most intimate of spaces has some brilliant detail, from the cheap clothes and fish-supper banquet to the tiny black and white TVs high up on the pub wall. Only the extended blackouts with music far too loud sound a clashing note.
This is Shakespeare for the violent film generation and, while the setting and style all transfer well, the production also sees fit to ape the movie music underscoring so ubiquitous on big and small screen.
Macbeth’s encounter with his wife in which the murderous plot first emerges is given a brooding drone which virtually screams ‘this is tense’ as if the words of Shakespeare which have managed to say exactly that for hundreds of years are no longer enough.
Underscoring is becoming this season’s vogue at the RSC and it’s perhaps time that a memo went round to all to trust in the man who wrote the play to tell the audience how they should be feeling.
