Though our English department had considerable debate this year about what the second show should be for the annual trip to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, we were unanimously excited about seeing Colm Feore in Macbeth and figured that it would best ‘sell’ the trip to the students. Perhaps it was our anticipation that led to our great disappointment.
The 3-hour drive to Stratford allowed us just enough time to check into the hotel and grab a quick bite before taking in our first show at the Avon Theatre, The Importance of Being Earnest, starring Brian Bedford. He has a consistently great presence on stage and, having enjoyed him as Lear two years ago, I expected him to be the highlight of the performance. However, it was easily Ben Carlson and Sara Topham that stole our attention. All told, this year’s Earnest is an excellent play all of us enjoyed it immensely. Oscar Wilde was a perfect way to spend an afternoon in Stratford … and we still had Macbeth to look forward to.
Little did we know that the Macbeth script had been inserted into a bad production of ‘Apocalypse Now-meets-The Ring’ and that the Weird Sisters had been replaced by a few intense granola-girl, humanitarian reactionaries!
Okay, William Shakespeare’s stories are timeless and universal. But, perhaps the multi-cultural, period-pieces are being a little overdone. The students often enjoy the Clare Danes/DiCaprio film in Grade 10, but by twelfth grade they’re complaining about Ethan Hawkes’ Hamlet effort and are begging for classic theatre.
Having said that, the mid-twentieth century, African setting is not my complaint about Stratford’s Macbeth production. Believe it or not, in the hands of another director, I think I’d like to give the African setting another opportunity. However, I would only sit through it if they got rid of at least half of the lighting, half of the bangs, buzzers and other noises, and all of the TV screens. With the amount of media used in this production, I might as well have stayed home and watched a webcast, or spent my money on a large rock concert. The words of Shakespeare were drowned amidst all of the noise and light, and the character of Macbeth wasn’t noticed at all.
Of course, it didn’t help that Colm Feore — this great actor from Trudeau, from Slings & Arrows, and perhaps the greatest Mercutio ever on a Stratford stage — was unfortunately completely wooden. Was he distracted? Or even angry at someone? Other than the ‘dagger’ speech, he didn’t seem human and used no inflection at all.
Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, was really good. After finding her stride, she gave perhaps the best performance of the night. The students wondered if the Michelle Obama resemblance was intentional. I like to think so.
All-in-all, this year’s Macbeth is a production with an identity crisis. On the bright side, perhaps it is such a bad production it will become infamous; years from now, people will say, “Oh! You saw the 2009 Macbeth! Wasn’t that something…?!”
In our eight years of marriage, my wife and I haven’t even considered bringing a TV set into our home. Where would we put it? And now, why even bother? The Internet keeps us informed, and I can catch the odd Bruins game at my father-in-law’s.
. She thought that I might want to watch it before I start my next Hamlet unit.