Macbeth

Review By: Carey Purcell
CareyPurcell@TheCinemaSource.com

His clothes are soaked in blood. Blood covers her face and hair. It even comes out of the faucet as she tries to wash her hands. Upon leaving the Brookyn Academy of Music's production of Macbeth, audience member may want to check their own clothes for red spots. Having witnessed such a deeply felt, intensely immersed program, they may feel the need to utter, "Out, damn spots!" themselves.

Staged at the BAM's tastefully decrepit Harvey Theater, Shakespeare's Scottish play is given a chilling resonance that permeates the audience with dread, despair and the inevitable acceptance of the two emotions. This achievement can be credited towards both the incredible aesthetics of the production and Patrick Stewart's performance in the title role, the viewing of which is an opportunity that presents itself once in a lifetime.

The setting is a grimy, gloomy, pre-Iron Curtain Russia, and the production begins and ends with blood and death. Macbeth is first introduced as a war hero, stoic and straight-backed, with a quiet, clipped manner of speaking. He fits neatly in to the stark, grey set, from which actors enter and leave through an old-fashioned freight elevator that spews mist and fog every time it opens. High-tech light and sound effects are also utilized, inspiring feelings of fear and impatience – both of which are fully personified by the leading man.

After his first encounter with the weird sisters (played with a gleeful fanaticism by Sophie Hunter, Polly Frame and Niamh McGrady), and with the encouragement of his wife (an excellent Kate Fleetwood), Macbeth is revealed to be a creature of thought and introspection – inevitably to a fault. Delivering his monologues in a dignified and restrained tone, Stewart gives the Thane of Cawdor's character a quiet reserve, which suits his bleak surroundings, rendered almost entirely in grey and contrasting sharply with the flowing red blood, reminiscent of Tim Burton's film adaptation of Sweeney Todd.

This Macbeth is slow, deliberate and cautious. He is introspective to a fault and carefully mulls over the consequences of his actions – repeatedly. He is presented in utter contrast with his wife, who, at least twenty years younger than him, is hasty, passionate and impulsive. The relationship between the two is a collaboration in power as well as domesticity, giving a texture of irony to their cold-hearted calculations of murder. They duck into their kitchen in the midst of a dinner party to discuss how to kill their guest of honor, while simultaneously pulling a cake from the fridge and preparing to serve it for dessert. Another moment of levity occurs when, awaiting her husband's return from the king's chambers, Lady Macbeth questions if he was able to find the daggers she left for him, in the same exasperated tone as a wife might wonder if a spouse was able to find the clean laundry left in the bedroom.

The dynamics between the husband and wife are intensely heated ...