Macbeth by William Shakespeare (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Paul Innes

MACBETH. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Richard Twyman. Dubai Opera House, Dubai. November 4, 2023.

Major theatrical productions were understandably on hiatus in the United Arab Emirates during the COVID-19 emergency. Large-scale events are beginning to resume, however, and the cooperative production of Macbeth—jointly produced by English Touring Theatre, Northern Stage, Shakespeare North Playhouse, and Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg—was a landmark event in post-pandemic Dubai.

The set remained unchanged throughout the performance, varied only in its presentation by the use of props, drapes, and screens mounted on the walls above the main playing space. The costuming was relatively neutral modern dress, and many of the minor roles were played by very young women. The sound design, featuring music by Louis Armstrong, for example, gave the production a 1920s feel, presumably intended to convey a society on the brink of catastrophe by conjuring up imminent stock market crashes and impending war.

The action of this Macbeth began with Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy from act 1, scene 5, so it was clear from the outset that this was going to be no ordinary presentation of the play. The focus on an individual character out of sync with the standard text of the play demonstrated a particularly intense emphasis on the main characters. The production continued throughout to rewrite the text by inserting plot elements—especially those relating to the Weird Sisters—at various unexpected points in the visual and narrative structure of events.

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Laura Elsworthy as Lady Macbeth in Macbeth. (Photo: The Other Richard.)

The result was a psychological character study of Macbeth’s descent into wild tyranny. After the banquet scene, for instance, Macbeth isolated himself even from his wife by leading her into their bedroom through a rear door before slamming it on her and [End Page 231] drawing drapes across it. The production consistently concentrated on Macbeth’s centrality, with the effect of turning the play into something like a horror story. At several points, Macbeth mimed the Weird Sisters almost as though he were possessed; the screens above the stage accompanied his performance with the sound of voices that would not be out of place in The Exorcist. No actors played the roles of the witches; the combination of screen imagery and Macbeth’s ventriloquism worked to modernize characters that can cause so many problems for contemporary audiences, thus avoiding kitsch presentations that verge on cackling crones.

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Mike Noble (Macbeth) and Laura Elsworthy (Lady Macbeth) in Macbeth. (Photo: The Other Richard.)

Such an intense concentration on the protagonist no doubt can work on the Shakespeare North Playhouse’s intimate stage in Liverpool, but it does not necessarily travel well in an enormous auditorium like the Dubai Opera House, which can comfortably seat two thousand. As the play was about to begin, a sound clip played that was meant to give some cultural information about paganism in early medieval Scotland, but it could not be heard in the upper circle. Due to the size of the auditorium, I found it difficult at times to follow the action and understand key moments in the reimagined plot, especially since Macbeth himself spoke the various prophecies. The intensity of the performance style, reinforced by the cutting and shifting of text, suffered in such a huge space.

The extreme focus on Macbeth did remove some of the political nuances of the play’s two versions of Scottish kingship. In this production, however, any lost opportunities were compensated for by Duncan’s appearing quite powerful. In addition, the ambitious rearrangement of the plot worked well to keep the audience aware of Macduff and Malcolm’s importance, which can be difficult to maintain in a conventional production due to their long absence from the stage. The choreographed violence at the end of the play made for a grand finale, with Macbeth breaking young Siward’s neck in a frenzy accompanied by gruesome horror-film sound effects. And like many other modern productions, this one showed the combat between Macbeth and Macduff, a necessary choice for...