Review: Brutal, cold, dystopian Macbeth, National Theatre and a Children of Men comparison
08/03/2018
You don't walk away feeling any sense of tragedy merely that you've watched a bunch of unsavoury characters killing each other.
The first time we see Macbeth (Rory Kinnear) in Rufus Norris' production at the National Theatre, he is committing a brutal act of violence on an enemy. It sets the play down a path that doesn't necessarily lead to satisfactory conclusions.
The setting is some point in the future when society seems to have broken down.
It's a landscape of generators, machetes, chest armour held together with parcel tape and clothes and buildings patched-up using whatever is available - mainly polythene it seems.
Only King Duncan (Stephen Boxer) wears a smart, intact, red, tailored suit.
Stylistically it reminded me of parts of Alfonso CuarĂ³n's film Children of Men (which I love), thematically there are similarities too.
The film is about an infertility crisis which leads to societal breakdown and of course Lady Macbeth (Anne-Marie Duff) and her husband are childless.
It could be argued that they seek out self-fulfilment in a desperate and increasingly brutal pursuit of power.
I liked the dark tone of the setting, even the Back to the Future, Doc Brown-esque porter played by Trevor Fox.
And I really liked the witches who were all different in their movements and energy levels and seem to haunt the dark corners of the stage.
But the characters are nearly as unrelentingly cold and brutal as the landscape they live in and it is easy not to care.
There is no charisma to Rory Kinnear's Macbeth and how can you sympathise with a man - and the woman who spurs him on - who is capable of such horrific acts from the outset?
In this video interview, Rufus Norris describes them as in one sense 'Shakespeare's most happily married couple' but this is no love story or crime of passion.