Macbeth
2014: Eve Best

This is another of the series from the Globe Theater in London, and it is a remarkably successful entry into the field.

A blurb on the package of this DVD refers to the warmth of this production. Warmth is probably not the first thing one expects to find in Macbeth, and yet the review is not mistaken. There is a genuine connection between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth; the other characters bring a complex humanity to their performances that is not, I think, surpassed by any other versions I have reviewed, with the possible exception of the one with Jason Connery (1997: Jeremy Freeston).

Joseph Millson’s rendition of Macbeth himself is nuanced, and his diction is richly varied but not flagrantly performative: the dialogue feels as if it’s rising from the actual exigencies of the character’s encounter with his situations rather than as some kind of merely declamatory exercise.

This does not mean that the diction of the film is uniformly outstanding. Billy Boyd (whom many will know as Pippin from the Lord of the Rings movies) delivers Banquo in his trademark Scottish accent, while the other (equally Scottish) characters do not. At least In Orson Welles’ Macbeth there was some sort of consistency here, though there some viewers found it an impediment to the experience.

Samantha Spiro’s Lady Macbeth is younger than some, but full of energy and passion.

Macbeth has a handful of extremely difficult speeches on which the whole can run aground. The first is Macbeth’s own “Is this a dagger...,” which is so potentially arch and fraught with problems that it seems more often mismanaged than not. Here it is played reasonably convincingly. The second is Lady Macbeth’s “mad” speech. The issue is a little closer here, but I think it still works without becoming overly embarrassing.

The banquet scene in which the ghost of Banquo appears is arguably the pivotal point of the play. This is done simply, and yet is very effective. The lines “...the times have been,/That, when the brains were out, the man would die,/And there an end; but now they rise again,” provoke a kind of nervous laughter in the audience; they are both horrifying and oddly comical because they are so preposterous; Millson’s rendition of the scene manages to capture both those extremes at once. Much of his diction is simple, quiet, and reflective, illustrating the tragedy of a man who is actually capable of moral thought, but who has destroyed his own identity for lack of the will power to preserve his integrity. The scene (and the first half of the play) ends with a vision of the shattered Lady Macbeth, apparently aware at last of what she’s lost.

It is part of the miracle of this play that, all the while realizing that Macbeth is an evil man and a murderer, it draws us into his perspective, and evokes a certain kind of sympathy with his plight.

The sets are chiefly made up of a wood palisade superimposed on the other backdrops, which creates a more rustic look than most of these productions.

An odd detail: after the murder of Banquo and the escape of Fleance, the first murderer kills the other two. I have not found anything in any text version of the play that suggests that this should be the case, though it’s true that he’s the only one who appears later.

Highly recommended. This will repay repeated viewings.

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