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May. 19th, 2024 12:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsVacationing various places at the moment -- almost certainly more on this anon -- but we saw Macbeth (an undoing) last night in Edinburgh and I really want to try to write down my thoughts on it while it's still all fresh in the mind, so I'm seizing the moment and the available internet on the Orkney ferry.
What I knew about this going in was "some sort of Lady M-focused riff on Macbeth," which (I thought going in) might well be either fun and clever or trite and reductive, but if one has the opportunity to see a Macbeth in Scotland one might as well do it.
The first act begins with a deeply metatextual R&G-esque intro with the woman who plays the lead witch and also Lady M's housekeeper aggressively addresses the audience and remarks upon the stage setting before the witches have a deeply eerie encounter with a wounded soldier on the heath ... after which most of the first act is, indeed mostly more or less a Macbeth, more or less straight from the text. There's some more natural-language scenes and dialogue woven in, generally pretty well and fluidly, and some odd plot additions, mostly focused Lady Macduff (she's Lady Macbeth's cousin, she's staying at the Macbeths' house, she's having an affair with Banquo, "wasn't this supposed to be a Lady Macbeth-focused riff?" I thought). We also learn that Lady M is political, and the housekeeper tells her several times that those three old women are at the gate to talk to her and she waves them away. Murders start happening, Macbeth is king, there's a banquet, we hit intermission.
ME: well, it's interesting, but I'm sort of confused by the choices
BETH: I'm waiting to give an opinion until I see how it's all going to come together
ME: I am trying very hard to reserve my opinions likewise .... but as of right now I'm not sure where the metatextual stuff went and I'm not disliking the Macbeth fanfic that replaced it but sort of confused about why it's happening ....
The second act diverges more and more dramatically from the original text. By about the thirty minute point, the following plot points from the first act & the original text had been briskly picked up in what seemed like it was about to be a neat little bow:
- Lady M has been in contact with the old women for ages about her unsuccessful pregnancies, and set them up to urge him on to do the murder to begin with
- Banquo has quite possibly survived the murder attempt (but Fleance hasn't) (but Lady MacDuff is pregnant with his child, which Lady M wants to raise, so that part of the prophecy can still be fulfilled) and may be lurking around the castle to drive Macbeth over the edge
(ME, TO MYSELF: Are we ... solving Macbeth? It's quite cleverly done and I'm enjoying seeing the pins knock down but I'm not sure Macbeth needs solving? This feels a bit like Aaron Sorkin attempting to take all the magic out of Camelot --)
Macbeth is losing it! We get the hand-washing scene reversed, with Lady M talking to a doctor and asking if there's anything that can be done for him! She heads out to meet the witches again as Macbeth does in the original, in the fog machine etc. --
-- and then throws a hissy fit. She yells for the assistant manager of the theater. This, she exclaims, is not how it's supposed to happen; she was supposed to meet them in a cafe, and reveal how non-supernatural the whole thing is, and enlist their help in confessing to Macbeth so he'll stop unraveling and go back to his old self. She hauls a chair out into the middle of the barren stage. She is going to meet them at a cafe.
Fine. They'll meet at a cafe. But the play is not that easily solved.
It starts to become increasingly clear from this point on that Lady M has her own version of the play -- a play where she is the Strong Female Lead, the person who gets and has gotten things done, where nothing is supernatural and everything can be resolved -- and she wants to be in that play and is trying to be in that play and it simply doesn't work.
Lady M returns to the castle to hold things together; she apologizes for the king's absence, says she'll be back soon, she'll be taking over for a bit in his place; his lords just go on with the scene, addressing her as the king. Lady M wants to know why they don't address her as the queen, she's the queen, she is the Woman Fixing the Play, and they look at her in complete perplexity as the ghosts start closing in. She yells to the stage manager for a clean dress, and the housekeeper|witch brings her white dress after white dress and her inevitably bloody hands stain one after another after another. Eventually she's right back in the hand-washing scene, as herself this time, and the play flips itself right back around. She's in a straightjacket; she's handcuffed to a bed.
The witches come in, and Lady M begs them for help. They leave her a knife, saying something about "what if this was a world where women helped each other" which fell SO flat and trite after all the deeply effective building horror that Beth and I turned at the same time to roll our eyes at each other in disappointment.
(ME, TO BETH, LATER: okay but given what happens later I think maybe that was on purpose? I think maybe we're supposed to find that beat trite and reductive?)
Then Macbeth is there, and he tells her that, in fact, he's solved the play, or rather his counselors have: she's a witch, and she bewitched him, and she made him do all of it.
She stabs him. She gives the famous speech -- a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing -- before Macduff comes in, and, of course, kills her.
... and in conclusion, I am like 75% sure this entire play is functioning as an aggressive argument about reductive takes on Macbeth and how you can't fix Macbeth as a narrative just by supporting women's wrongs enthusiastically enough, any more than you can fix it by blaming everything on Lady M. If this is the case -- if the bit that fell flat was indeed supposed to fall flat -- then I think I like it? But does it work if you're not going into this theatrical experience already primed and ready to have a good solid fight about themes in Macbeth? And does it need to work if ditto ditto? These and many others are questions I am not yet ready to answer but I would love to hear thoughts if anyone has seen/will see it!
What I knew about this going in was "some sort of Lady M-focused riff on Macbeth," which (I thought going in) might well be either fun and clever or trite and reductive, but if one has the opportunity to see a Macbeth in Scotland one might as well do it.
The first act begins with a deeply metatextual R&G-esque intro with the woman who plays the lead witch and also Lady M's housekeeper aggressively addresses the audience and remarks upon the stage setting before the witches have a deeply eerie encounter with a wounded soldier on the heath ... after which most of the first act is, indeed mostly more or less a Macbeth, more or less straight from the text. There's some more natural-language scenes and dialogue woven in, generally pretty well and fluidly, and some odd plot additions, mostly focused Lady Macduff (she's Lady Macbeth's cousin, she's staying at the Macbeths' house, she's having an affair with Banquo, "wasn't this supposed to be a Lady Macbeth-focused riff?" I thought). We also learn that Lady M is political, and the housekeeper tells her several times that those three old women are at the gate to talk to her and she waves them away. Murders start happening, Macbeth is king, there's a banquet, we hit intermission.
ME: well, it's interesting, but I'm sort of confused by the choices
BETH: I'm waiting to give an opinion until I see how it's all going to come together
ME: I am trying very hard to reserve my opinions likewise .... but as of right now I'm not sure where the metatextual stuff went and I'm not disliking the Macbeth fanfic that replaced it but sort of confused about why it's happening ....
The second act diverges more and more dramatically from the original text. By about the thirty minute point, the following plot points from the first act & the original text had been briskly picked up in what seemed like it was about to be a neat little bow:
- Lady M has been in contact with the old women for ages about her unsuccessful pregnancies, and set them up to urge him on to do the murder to begin with
- Banquo has quite possibly survived the murder attempt (but Fleance hasn't) (but Lady MacDuff is pregnant with his child, which Lady M wants to raise, so that part of the prophecy can still be fulfilled) and may be lurking around the castle to drive Macbeth over the edge
(ME, TO MYSELF: Are we ... solving Macbeth? It's quite cleverly done and I'm enjoying seeing the pins knock down but I'm not sure Macbeth needs solving? This feels a bit like Aaron Sorkin attempting to take all the magic out of Camelot --)
Macbeth is losing it! We get the hand-washing scene reversed, with Lady M talking to a doctor and asking if there's anything that can be done for him! She heads out to meet the witches again as Macbeth does in the original, in the fog machine etc. --
-- and then throws a hissy fit. She yells for the assistant manager of the theater. This, she exclaims, is not how it's supposed to happen; she was supposed to meet them in a cafe, and reveal how non-supernatural the whole thing is, and enlist their help in confessing to Macbeth so he'll stop unraveling and go back to his old self. She hauls a chair out into the middle of the barren stage. She is going to meet them at a cafe.
Fine. They'll meet at a cafe. But the play is not that easily solved.
It starts to become increasingly clear from this point on that Lady M has her own version of the play -- a play where she is the Strong Female Lead, the person who gets and has gotten things done, where nothing is supernatural and everything can be resolved -- and she wants to be in that play and is trying to be in that play and it simply doesn't work.
Lady M returns to the castle to hold things together; she apologizes for the king's absence, says she'll be back soon, she'll be taking over for a bit in his place; his lords just go on with the scene, addressing her as the king. Lady M wants to know why they don't address her as the queen, she's the queen, she is the Woman Fixing the Play, and they look at her in complete perplexity as the ghosts start closing in. She yells to the stage manager for a clean dress, and the housekeeper|witch brings her white dress after white dress and her inevitably bloody hands stain one after another after another. Eventually she's right back in the hand-washing scene, as herself this time, and the play flips itself right back around. She's in a straightjacket; she's handcuffed to a bed.
The witches come in, and Lady M begs them for help. They leave her a knife, saying something about "what if this was a world where women helped each other" which fell SO flat and trite after all the deeply effective building horror that Beth and I turned at the same time to roll our eyes at each other in disappointment.
(ME, TO BETH, LATER: okay but given what happens later I think maybe that was on purpose? I think maybe we're supposed to find that beat trite and reductive?)
Then Macbeth is there, and he tells her that, in fact, he's solved the play, or rather his counselors have: she's a witch, and she bewitched him, and she made him do all of it.
She stabs him. She gives the famous speech -- a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing -- before Macduff comes in, and, of course, kills her.
... and in conclusion, I am like 75% sure this entire play is functioning as an aggressive argument about reductive takes on Macbeth and how you can't fix Macbeth as a narrative just by supporting women's wrongs enthusiastically enough, any more than you can fix it by blaming everything on Lady M. If this is the case -- if the bit that fell flat was indeed supposed to fall flat -- then I think I like it? But does it work if you're not going into this theatrical experience already primed and ready to have a good solid fight about themes in Macbeth? And does it need to work if ditto ditto? These and many others are questions I am not yet ready to answer but I would love to hear thoughts if anyone has seen/will see it!
no subject
Date: 2024-05-19 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-19 07:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-19 08:00 pm (UTC)But also — I’m so excited that you’re going to Orkney! Are you also going to Shetland? I love that ferry!
no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-19 08:10 pm (UTC)Say hi for me to the Arthuriana! If you go to the Shetlands I have an actual request!
I am like 75% sure this entire play is functioning as an aggressive argument about reductive takes on Macbeth and how you can't fix Macbeth as a narrative just by supporting women's wrongs enthusiastically enough, any more than you can fix it by blaming everything on Lady M.
That sounds really interesting and I'm not sure why you would do it as a play.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:49 pm (UTC)I ALSO am not sure why you would do it as a play but the stagecraft was frankly incredible. I have no idea how they kept Lady M's hands so bloody
no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:57 pm (UTC)The Old Man of Hoy shows up in Powell and Pressburger's The Spy in Black (1939). Close enough for government work! Please do not actually hang out in front of it all night in a sea-fog without a coat on!
no subject
Date: 2024-05-19 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-19 11:09 pm (UTC)//sulks
no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 01:07 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 02:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:59 pm (UTC)that said "Lady McD is having an affair with Banquo" is such a funny take out of nowhere that despite now knowing that it's a plot set up for the Banquo's kid prophecy I still cannot think of it as anything but a checkbox on somebody's rarepair bingo
no subject
Date: 2024-05-23 08:37 pm (UTC)ty for answering the what is up with that part of my question though
no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 08:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-23 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 12:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 09:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 06:27 pm (UTC)More seriously: Um. Huh. That sounds like ... a thing to have experienced.
no subject
Date: 2024-05-20 09:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-21 09:00 am (UTC)My immediate sense (and I say this less than two weeks before I'm slated to see a production of Macbeth myself) is that if one's agenda in directing the play is to "fix" its portrayals of women, they're probably directing the wrong play.
For my part, I'd maintain that the single all-time best rehab of Shakespeare's Macbeth is the Disney animated series Gargoyles.
(I had known since first seeing the play as a teen that Shakespeare's Scottish history was about as reliable as Disney's version of Pocahontas. What I didn't realize till I went looking much later was that the Gargoyles writers had pulled very nearly all of the plot and character arcs for their 10th century material straight out of genuine Scottish succession conflicts, to the extent that one could reasonably use the relevant episodes in public school history classes.)
no subject
Date: 2024-05-22 08:43 pm (UTC)