Something wicked this way comes…
Many are familiar with the Shakespeare’s Macbeth; however, few will have experienced an adaption quite like the National Theatre’s extraordinary take on the tragic tale.
Catapulting the Scottish Play from the 11th century into a new, post-apocalyptic setting, director Rufus Norris breathes new life into the story of the ill-fated king, whose almighty downfall is driven by his unbridled ambition for power.
Following a sell-out run at the Olivier Theatre in London, the touring version of the show opened at Glasgow’s Theatre Royal back in February.
The tragedy begins with the play’s namesake holding aloft the bloodied, decapitated head of his enemy Macdonwald – signalling from the get-go that this is not a production for the faint of heart.
From there the play careers towards its tragic end, with the tumultuous events often being watched over by the three witches from large poles dotted around the unusually constructed stage.
I spoke with assistant director Liz Stevenson to find out more about this daring production and gain some insight into the thought process behind it…
H: Could you describe your role in relation to the production and your main responsibilities?
L: Alongside director Rufus Norris and the casting director I choose the new cast for the touring production, as bar one it is an entirely new cast (compared to the London version of the production), and I rehearsed it with Rufus. He was working back at the National Theatre at the time and working on various other projects, so I was doing most of the rehearsals in London for this touring production. (Also) because it’s a touring production and we are going to all kinds of spaces that are going to be different to the Olivier stage, the show did kind of evolve and change quite a lot through being made for the tour, so I worked with Rufus on all of that as well. Now the show is open and it’s going to a different place every week I do the technical rehearsals and just make sure that it looks as we want it to look in every space, whether its large or small.
H: This production of Macbeth is quite unique in its setting of a post-apocalyptic world. Why did you decide to do this?
L: I think with Rufus, a lot of it started really for him with the relationship between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth. He wanted the audience to understand what would make these two people so desperate that they would want to do this, to kill the king that they are so close to. In order to empathise with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth he wanted to set it in a world where it’s quite desolate and where these characters really are desperate, and the only means of security for Macbeth and Lady Macbeth is for them to have power, to be king and queen. He didn’t really like idea of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth being high up in their ivory tower… he wanted to understand what would push them to do an act like this.
(Also) with the witches there’s a lot of superstition in the play, and Rufus felt that in times of suffering and in bleak times people are more susceptible to those kinds of things… I know that Rufus was sort of imagining that it was 15 years in the future after a major crisis…the banks have crashed, law and order has gone out the window… we’re setting this 15 years ahead of that, which doesn’t sound like very long, but actually if law and order was to go out the window and if things were to be turned upside down then we really would descend into chaos very rapidly. There’s so much violence in the play and these people really are survivors, so he wanted to find the right environment in which to bring to light some of those themes in the play.
H: Were there any parts of the play that proved particularly challenging?
L: It’s epic but it’s also quite intimate. So, some of the scenes you’ve got big battles and 10,000 men coming over to Macbeth’s castle and the witches up on the heath… but you’ve also got intimate scenes between a husband and wife. On the Olivier stage and on the large scale venues which we’re touring to, it’s a real challenge for the design and for the staging to achieve both… the set has to change slightly every week and so does some of the staging, so it’s interesting how different moments in the play are brought to light in different ways, depending on the theatre space where we’re taking it to, so that’s kind of an ongoing challenge… But it was really interesting bringing it to life with a new cast, because that also brings new meaning and new ideas into the mix, so that was a really interesting process.
H: What were you looking for in the characters when you were casting?
L: Michael Nardone (tour version) is a very different Macbeth to Rory Kinnear (London version) and as a result it sometimes has a different effect on how the story is told. With Nardone, you really believe that he has been a war hero and you really believe that he is capable of killing for survival… I think when you’re looking for someone to cast you’ve got to really believe that this person is a real survivor and a really strong soldier, but he also loves his wife and certainly feels the loss of them having lost a child. So he’s very human, he’s not just a brute, so I think you’re looking for both those, someone who you can really believe that in… the journey that Macbeth has to go on is so massive from the start of the play to the end, so you really need an actor who can take the audience on that journey with him.
H: This play is full of engaging and complex characters, is there one in particular that really interests you?
L: I really like the porter and what Rufus has done with the character… what Rufus has done with this edit of the script is often given the lines of smaller characters, the maid or the servant, to more central characters so that you don’t ever have random people coming on stage for a moment and then leaving again… so it feels like a tight knit community, he wanted you to be able to follow these characters on a journey. So, you actually have the porter throughout the play, he’s kind of like Macbeth’s right-hand man. And the porter kind of knows what Macbeth is doing and is implicit but can’t do anything about it, so you follow his perspective of the events as they unfold. I really like that, and I really like the way that Deka Walmsley plays that character as someone who can see that none of this is good news… you really relate to him as someone that is caught up in this mess.
I also really like Ross who is played as female character in this production. In this world which is kind of imagined 15 years after a crisis, society as we know it turned upside down, the people that are left, the people that have survived in this world have to have been real survivors… they’re all made of tough stuff and they’ve all been through a lot, and I think that Rachel Sanders really captures that; she’s a woman but she’s a fighter… it’s not just men that fight in this world, it’s based on your merit as to whether or not you survive.
Header Image: Brinkhoff and Moegenburg
