Macbeth at the RSC: the Red Finger Club?

One of my A levels was English Lit. I was encouraged to apply to do the subject at university but I felt I’d had enough – if I studied it any more, I’d cease to enjoy it. So this is never going to be a theatre review blog, although I see a lot of theatre, and advanced age means the bonus of reduced price seats! But last night’s experience at Stratford was so poor that I have to say something. This is the Royal Shakespeare Company, for goodness’ sake! We went to the new production of ‘Macbeth’, starring Reuben Joseph, who has played Hamilton (I love ‘Hamilton’). The acting, the verse speaking, were mixed, but that wasn’t the main problem – it was the incoherent production.

There’s a deliberately Scottish vibe – makes sense – which is reflected in the casting and in some of the design, but not all of it. The time is the near future, a time of chaos with dodgy electrical supply; wind-up torches, portable equipment, lights which fail at convenient moments. Well, we certainly had chaos, along with some attempt to convey the whole witchy thing. A man with a little machine walked round at the start to give us some spooky dry ice effects, and dead birds fell out of the sky at odd points in the first half. In the second half, the witches swept them out of the way; this was a good move as one had got a bit tangled in Lady Macbeth’s skirt earlier on. I rapidly reached the point where, if one more bird fell on the stage, I would have lost control completely.

The witches entered by using a device which reminded me of something I originally saw in 1982, in the RSC ‘Witch of Edmonton’ at The Pit (no further spoilers as it was one of the better moments in this production of ‘Macbeth’). Oh dear, it’s not good to remember that experience in 1982. It was so very well done that I nearly jumped out of my skin. The whole production was impeccable, and chilling, Miles Anderson as the Dog being particularly memorable. There was not a moment in this ‘Macbeth’ which came anywhere near.

Much of the pre-publicity I had seen was about the rewriting of the Porter scene, with Alison Peebles playing the role as stand-up. And wow, was she good! Complete control of the stage. Very funny political jokes. Excellent jokes at the expense of the GCSE students brought in as school parties or by their parents (there were many, of both, and they gave every sign of having enjoyed the show). A few minutes of something entirely different…

And then we were back into the play, sadly. And I am not convinced that the Porter scene was a commentary on the themes of that play.

Eventually we reached the interval, and three out of five of our party announced they weren’t going to stick around for any more of this. We debated doing the same, but one of my character traits is persistence and, besides, this was the first evening after surgery 8 days before that I had felt like myself again. So, onwards. I noted from the gaps in the auditorium that our friends weren’t the only ones to decide that an early night had more appeal than this production.

At the start of the second half, the witches wandered round with giant protractors and there was a projected red circle on the stage, from the centre of which a flame shot up. Just the once. The procession of kings-to-come carried triangular mirrors. I have seen far more interesting ways of playing this scene but hey. Then the witches flew on wires, again just the once; not sure if that added anything. OK, let’s be honest – it didn’t.

As a medical historian, I’m always interested in how ‘Out damned spot’ is done. Here, Lady Macbeth delivered the speech while wearing a red bicycle lamp on one wrist and a white one on the other. Why? No idea. The doctor wore a spotless white hazmat suit and had a little white box which didn’t seem to have any point at all. After a previous dire RSC production, the March 2023 Julius Caesar, the excellent Peter Viney commented at length on the use of black paint there instead of red, for blood. Maybe that was about ‘Just Stop Oil’? Maybe they had run out of red stuff? Whatever; Viney called it the Black Hand Gang. In Macbeth, it’s more the Red Finger Gang. The main characters had a few fingers painted red from the start and in the second half both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth had washed-out red all over their hands. Nobody except them seemed to be able to see it; and maybe Macbeth couldn’t see his own.

In Shakespeare, as Viney has also noted, one’s always waiting for that Big Speech, the one learned by heart if you were doing an exam. In Julius Caesar, it’s ‘Friends, Romans, countrymen’, and in that March 2023 production it was one of the (scarily few) really good moments. In Macbeth, a key speech is ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow…’ In this production, Macbeth paused and then took up the mic used earlier by the stand-up comic Porter before continuing the speech. Why? No idea. It didn’t add anything. 

Nor did the gender-blind casting. This can be used so well; for example, in the 2023 RSC ‘Tempest’ with Alex Kingston, where a female Prospero made us reconsider the usual father/daughter relationship within the play. In ‘Macbeth’, we had several women playing key characters like Banquo and Malcolm. I wasn’t convinced. While I’m at it, nor was I convinced about Banquo’s ghost wearing a fetching pale blue and yellow number and looking entirely unscathed, other than generally bloodless – which goes against Macbeth asking him/her not to ‘Never shake thy gory locks at me’. 

Viney wrote about Julius Caesar, ‘It’s just about the worst Shakespeare production we’ve seen at the RSC. I’m not faulting a single actor, though I think the concept put them in roles that were an uphill struggle.’ Something similar applies here, but there are ways in which this was even worse. I can just about cope with Macbeth mouthing ‘What the fuck??’ to the audience but as Macduff (very good performance by George Anton) was dragging Macbeth off stage to finish beating the hell out of him, Macbeth said ‘I’m sorry’. Judging from the applause at the end, the GCSE students loved it. I am sure they will have interesting conversations back in their classes, but if they conclude that Shakespeare invented stand-up and Macbeth was really sorry for all he’d done, then I anticipate low grades despite all the money spent on tickets.