By S.E. Barcus
April 30, 2022
Part 1. The Name’s MacFindley. Macbeth MacFindley.
Part 2. Fair Is Fargo, and Fargo Is Foul.
Part 3. Macbeth – the multi-million-dollar art-world Chelsea installation.
Through the month of April, I had the chance to see and compare three Macbeths: a NYC live production with Daniel Craig; a film by one of the Coen brothers; and an immersive performance installation in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood. They were all great, and yet different enough to make each one – even the third one experienced in just a month – still feel fresh. It probably doesn’t hurt that the script is one of the greatest tragedies ever written.
Three Weird Macbeths
Part 1. The Name’s MacFindley. Macbeth MacFindley.
Daniel Craig’s Shaggy-to-Murderer Dichotomy
By S.E. Barcus
William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, at the Longacre Theatre
Previewed from March 29, Opened April 28, runs through July 10, 2022
Directed by Sam Gold
Starring Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga
On Wednesday, April 13 (oooo…!), I saw a preview of the new production of Macbeth, directed by Sam Gold at the Longacre Theatre. Sorry for this review’s title. Cheap reference to James Bond, I know. But who can resist — folks (like me!) wanna see the stars live like they wanna see their favorite singers live, even if it means shelling out a buncha dough, sitting or standing uncomfortably sandwiched for hours betwixt a bunch of potentially-covid-infested public…. (Not a joke – the previews were cancelled April 1-11 due to some of the actors testing positive.)
On sitting down, the curtain is already drawn and the stage is bare, no illusions, appropriately desolate for this play. The empty stage’s back wall stares at us with its pipes and whatnot. Just a stage, just a lightbulb, a la Brecht’s verfremdungseffekt. (Perhaps we should call it, ‘verfremdungsaBrecht’?) This “set” is actually subtly genius, as it (spoiler alert!) physically blows the whole set budget at the very end just to complement one of the main themes of the play, that nothing is as it seems…. “False face must hide what the Scenic Designer, Christine Jones, doth know.” ‘Props’ for that surprise ending. Never seen anyone take a V-Effekt-set and then do the shim-sham with it. (It’s just a stage – or is it?! It’s like a … well … a secret double agent….)
Stage right there are some chefs as we sit down, putting together a little amateur cooking class for us while we sit and wait for the show to start. (They were really chopping and cooking something, but I couldn’t smell it. Granted, hard to do so through the masks – were there even onions? Increase the heat, man! Get that smellovision into effect! … Hey! – did they just pour some pre-made Thai-curry-to-go-looking thing in there! Cheaters!)
Then the play starts. Daniel Craig is there initially with the whole cast as no one in particular yet, just one of the army, spitting on the floor. A man, presumably Thane of Condor, is then executed to disturbing music – and then our fair, innocent cooking-class chefs in jeans come over, grab some of the blood trickling down the cut throat, and … pour it into their foul soup! Ah! They’re the witches, of course, who then begin the famous setting of the stage for us, where fair is foul, and foul is fair etc. But why are the two techs also with them? I mean, these techs move around all night with their spots and smoke machines, but they also “act” as if they’re witches, too, on the stage, at times (again, possibly a reverse of the alienation effect, where actors are supposed to be just like real-life people on the stage with no illusions. These techs – who are supposed to be real-life stage-hands – at times, then, become ‘actors’…? Ok. Got it. But now you have friggin five witches instead of the classic three? I mean, Hecate’s not in the first scene…. Kinda confusing….)
Soon we are at the scene where Macbeth and Banquo confront the witches, where we finally get into Daniel Craig’s acting. And you know what? He was great. Perhaps it was his years playing that spy, having to pretend you’re something that you’re not, that made him a good Macbeth, although he really only had two main emotional dynamics – humorously worried and threateningly murderous.
I admit I didn’t know what to expect from Daniel Craig the theater actor. I think the most pleasant surprise is that he turns out to be bona fide funny. In this production – similar to his surprisingly pleasing Knives Out CSI:KFC-detective role – he shows a totally different side from his Bond role. This famous hunky guy has a pleasing, goofy sense of humor! (Weird to figure this out in a Macbeth lead!) Although, again, it often goes disturbingly back and forth to an angry potentially violent man, like someone with a dissociative identity disorder. Or a psychopath who only intermittently feels empathy out of nowhere for some reason.
He starts right away with a fairly evil ambitious take on the role, the way he presents the line, “The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step on which I must fall down, or else o’erleap,
For in my way it lies.” Let’s just say that he says the end of that line in a pretty creepy way. But then he’s funny again, like the way he tells Banquo, re: the prophecy and witches, that “I think not of them,” in a way that could’ve been accompanied by a cartoonish guilt-filled whistling. Or the way he changes his mind on the assassination, telling his wife “we will proceed no further in this business” with a Little Rascals’-like determined and humorous cross-armed ‘harumph’.
But then, suddenly he is creepy again, close to a possible wife-beater when he yells at Lady Macbeth’s pressing, to “Pray thee piece!” Or when he follows the dagger (a tech on stage with a spot light) and does the deed, with a single stab that doesn’t quite kill the king, so then a harrowing series of stabs, over and over again.
Then back to goofy again. He comes back from the deed, freaked out, making use of the bare-staged-alienation-style by going to the offstage cast-and-crew refrigerator that is viewable to us all – grabbing a beer, plopping down on a chair, and “unwinding” from his ‘hard day at work,’ while his “Married With Children” Lady berates him for bringing back the daggers. His “sleep no more” lines, and refusal to go back to the site of the murder, could just as easily have been told by Shaggy: “like, no way, man – you go back there!” (Lady Macbeth should’ve offered him a Scooby snack.)
But then back to psychopath. “I care not!” he yells at the taunting Lady Macbeth just moments later, again giving me the creeps that he’s likely an abusive husband. Or when he decides to murder Banquo. And soon after Macduff’s entire family. This Macbeth can find the evil within and ride it. But then hysterically scaredy-cat again! Like with Banquo’s ghost, where, if Lady Macbeth could hold him, he’d probably jump up in her arms like Shaggy often does with Scooby. (I once saw an ambitious Klingon-Macbeth, but they didn’t pull it off…. Has anyone ever done a Scooby-Doo-themed Macbeth? Macbeth and Banquo like Shaggy and Scooby with the Witches? … DM me. Lol.) When Banquo’s ghost is finally gone and the psychosis/spell is broken, Craig’s line, “Oh, I’m a man, again,” has the timing of a good stand-up comic.
OK, enough of Craig. Needless to say, I personally loved his performance overall, if a bit emotionally limited, and perhaps at times not being 100% present. (Oh – but for you who want the sexy – he can also deliver lines like, “How now you secret, black, and midnight hags,” in a quite a flirty way….)
Ruth Negga’s Lady Macbeth was very noble and refined when she was in public, gracious with big gestures. Then very plotting and devious in private with Macbeth. The serpent et al. She, too, could grab her own laughs, with her take on lines like, “O, never shall sun that morrow see!” — which seemed to demand two snaps up after she said it. Neither of these two actors are Scottish, but Negga’s Irish background and accent gave her the more realistic Celtic feel to the role. (Of course, everyone else was speaking Amurkin, so it wasn’t really a “who’s more Celtic than who” sort of version of the play….) However — on at least one of her laugh-lines, it was the set up by Craig that gave her the laugh. Craig: “we shall proceed no further with this business!” (harumph.) Negga’s follow-up with, “Was the hope drunk wherein you dressed yourself?” got a big laugh after this, but only because it was set up so well by Craig’s Shaggy-like hesitancy and cowardice.
Negga plays well the multitude of Lady Macbeth lines dealing with disturbing de-sexing language in a calm, rational manner — like a psychopath, with little feeling. From worrying about the mother’s milk of human kindness, to wanting to “unsex me now”, to Macbeth hoping she’ll have nothings but males, to dashing the gummy baby’s brains out…. Eesh. (I’m surprised, in this current era of dramatically and rapidly evolving gender identity politics, that none of the Macbeths I saw really did a “deep-dive” into Lady Macbeth’s and Shakespeare’s total-warfare attack on what it means to be a “woman”. Even Lady Macduff gets into the action with her lines about “the womanly defense to say I have done no harm….”) On her “make thick my blood”, we are definitely dealing with an ambitious Killing Eve-like Villanelle. Her sleep-walking scene was amazing. “Out! Damn spot! Out I say!” was filled with such deep-throated exasperation. Deep sorrowful mourning and moaning with her “what’s done cannot be undone.” It made me downright uncomfortable … which means … great acting.
Of the rest, I enjoyed Paul Lazar, a Wooster Group member and frequent performer with Classic Stage Company. For our show, he really shined as the porter. The way he delivered his ‘knock knock knock!’ monologue – with his gestures – brought home the sexual inuendo better, and got more laughs, than anyone else I’ve ever seen do the part.
Also great was Michael Patrick Thornton. Disability advocates – who rightly often bemoan the fact that people with disabilities are arguably the last bastion of acceptable discrimination — will be ‘happy’ to note his inclusion despite – perhaps because of? – his wheelchair throughout the play. (For how kinda over-the-top-P.C. Broadway can be, the righteous and conscious sense of inclusion – even more so than in “liberal Hollywood” — is overall very cool. Broadway and New York City culture just has this honest Sesame Street, Free-To-Be-You-And-Me sort of quality to it, pushing America’s progressive culture every chance it gets. Very cool. … Cuz I mean, why the fuck wouldn’t you have an actor like Thornton in a major Broadway production?! Just because of a stupid wheelchair?!) The way Thornton creates Lennox, as he relates the death of the king — and the ‘guilt’ of his guards, with daggers which “unwiped we found upon their pillows” — is so hysterically deadpan, I thought he was Steven Wright for a sec.
It did make me uncomfortable, though, that Craig – back in his evil mode – face-palmed Thornton and pushed him, thus rolling his wheel-chaired-self away from him, when he said, “take thy face hence” in Act 5. It was a bullying sort of move that disability advocates probably hated – but was also completely realistic that the psychopath king would do such a thing…. But that it got a laugh — including from me — made me uncomfortable; felt guilty. It shouldn’t have been funny, I think.
Banquo, played by Amber Gray, a woman, mixed it up a little with genders. Interesting acting/directing choices, such as tapping her lower abdomen when talking about how her children would be kings in the future.
Finally, in our night, Understudy Peter Smith, stood out as well, but not in a good way. As Malcolm, his acting was tired and affected, sounding more like Al Gore in South Park, wanting everyone to be “super super Cereal about that ManBearPig, Macbeth!” They’re giving out free tickets to high school kids, according to Craig on Colbert. Well … one of those kids literally shouted out “THIS IS BORING!” (with better projection and enunciation than Smith) during Smith’s long and tiresome monologue in Act 4 scene 3 (which to be fair, really should have been cut, as it was in the Coen film). Maybe not a good idea, giving out those free tickets! 😊
Director Sam Gold (geez what a movie-industry name!) was also initially going for Gore, although not the South Park type, more the “I’m gonna get all Coriolanus on his ass” type, from the beginning with the slit throat, to the pilot’s thumb being cut off on stage, all the way to the bloody fight scene at the end with Macbeth and Macduff. The directing, overall, was odd. Taking off from the V-Effekt set, the unifying direction seemed to want a combination of an alienation affect combined with nothing being as it seemed. For example — the degree to which the chorus sounded amateur HAD to have been intentional. After hearing of the “merciless Macdonald,” everyone yells, “Boo!,” trying to seem like a large army crying out, but it was as lackluster as a bunch of kids in a high school English class reading Shakespeare aloud. (“This is boring!” one can hear in the “subtext” of that ‘boo’…. Holy crap! The kid bad-mouthing the play — was he a plant!? Gold’s a GENIUS!) Goodness help me, if this intermittent listlessness wasn’t somehow intentional, on BROADWAY…. Then.… Wow.
Thus – intended or not – this was an uneven production – some of the actors (the stars) were amazing – while many of the lesser roles seemed like high school actors they brought up to Broadway for the night to ‘put on a show!’ Some folks had issues with all the double casting. It was definitiely confusing at times, but worth it. Theater is expensive, and things were understandable enough. But, I will say — what was with the very end, when one of the witches, Bobbi MacKenzie, sings with a beautiful voice, dishing out soup to all of the cast, and we just watch as they sit around eating it quietly, while she sings, for 3 minutes…? But she was a witch – and that soup was foul – so it made the whole sweet ending seem as creepy and sardonic as the song “Still Alive” at the end of the game, “Portal”. The song sounds like some Celtic folk song, with the chorus, “I wish I had known it wasn’t meant to be perfect.” Is Gold fucking with us, or what?
The music, composed by Gaelynn Lea, was wonderfully disturbing (sometimes crashing on us at possibly above the legal limit of decibels at times, however?), punctuating the end of scenes here, coming in softly and menacingly within tense scenes there. Often the music just long held onto one menacing tone/chord, somewhat late-Hans-Zimmer style. Other times more disturbing with her simple but loud violin riffs, Laurie Anderson style, and loud drumming accompaniment, or gongs or rock cymbals, at times something like Tom Waits’ Black Rider. My favorite – although it made me deaf – was the “owl that shrieked” during the king’s murder, a seriously ear-piercing steam engine whistle, distorted with Godzilla sound effects or some shit, like a Banshee out in the woods. This shriek returns during the murder of Banquo. Often with a frenetically tremulous violin, a sorrowful cello, and background thunder and rain always seeming to aurally color the stage. I guess this is Lea’s Broadway debut. Great job, totally fantastic.
Finally, I also enjoyed the lighting, designed by Jane Cox – from simple and barren with just a light bulb to suddenly harsh, with disturbing sharp blue blinding lights from above that at times turned to the audience like an arena rock show’s special effects. There is a stylistic synergy to the lights and the sound, and the overall production. At times on stage, we’re in a high school show, REALLY verfremdungseffekting it, but then at other times suddenly totally living vicariously through someone else in a psychologically horrifying and evil world in an old-school Aristotelian manner. Back and forth. I gotta think Gold intended a lot of this? But if so, it’s not clear, nor very effective, so does that matter? This road to Macbeth might have been paved with good intentions.
I mean, but overall, it’s not hell — this production isn’t horrible. Craig and Negga are great and fun to experience. And the play itself is still a classic, a tradition, to experience every few years, no matter what. So, you could do a lot worse. Again, the main titillating reason to see the play is for the stars. (Tell me how many folks are seeing Macbeth on Broadway because of Shakespeare or Gold – and how many are seeing it to see Negga, and especially Craig?) Folks spend as much or more on their Radiohead, or Tyler, the Creator, or Billie Eilish, or Mitski tickets all the time. It is mos def worth the price of the ticket to see Daniel Craig live, doing a wonderful job, for perhaps the only chance in your life. Anything else you might happen to also enjoy that evening you should just consider cherries on the top. And there are plenty of those, too, see above.
It’s interesting, actually. There is a recent shift away from the ‘star system’ in Hollywood, with films not produced around stars as much, anymore, but rather focusing on directors or ‘cinematic universes’. This Macbeth is a definite star-system-Broadway type of play. But Broadway, too, seems to be shifting toward “universes”. Disney musicals in their case (except sorry, Marvel, Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark didn’t really go so well!), or the sad more recent trend of turning Hollywood movies into cheesy musicals. When Hollywood doesn’t take risks, and only makes sequels, and Broadway doesn’t take risks, and only does musicals of rehashed Hollywood movies, we will soon learn why replicas of replicas and clones of clones get so degraded and broken and unhealthy over time…. So, more power to Daniel Craig for trying to get our butts in the seats for a Shakespeare play! He doesn’t HAVE to do this. You get the feeling he WANTS to do this. I take it back – give the tickets out to those unruly high school kids. It’s the whole point. Go stars, go! Do your thing!
Stars – do not hide your fires!
Copyright April 30, 2022
S.E. Barcus 