Macbeth by William Shakespeare (review)

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Reviewed by:

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Christopher Crosbie (bio)

Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, directed by Simon Godwin, The Shakespeare Company, Washington, D.C. (April 9 – May 5, 2024)

The penultimate figure in Jacques’ “seven ages of man” soliloquy brilliantly conveys the vulnerabilities of old age, presenting us with a person living in “a world too wide for his shrunk shank” (2.7.160-1). As the body weakens for this figure, the surrounding world seems larger and more unsettling, perhaps dangerous. This rhetorical move is spatial but the effect cinematic. We can almost feel the distortions happening within and around the isolated individual, exposed in a world where agency itself seems to diminish.

It may seem unnatural to bring the forest of Arden marching toward Scotland, yet this dialectic of shrinking figures and a world of overwhelming scope informs so much of Simon Godwin’s compelling production of Macbeth, adapted by Emily Burns and starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. The production presents a world of immense, unstoppable violence, a place where tsunamis of human brutality relentlessly sweep across everything in their path; at the same time, it gives us, in the very best ways, a claustrophobic world where shattered individuals, more often than not, only serve to make matters worse. Rather than worrying whether Shakespeare offers us a national or personal tragedy, this Macbeth effectively marshals its interest in both the play’s broad scope and its sense of intimate collapse to yield a tale as much about fatigue and despair as about sound and fury.

Performed in a warehouse away from the STC’s usual venue, Godwin’s Macbeth immediately announces its status as a different kind of theatrical event, immersive virtually from the outset. The warehouse’s outer section houses concessions, ad hoc restrooms, modest seating, and a curiously large sculpture of the letter “M,” a somewhat odd accent choice, but one that doesn’t quite detract from the general atmosphere. Mist descends from above, filtering through hanging lighting, which guides the audience past a curtained border into a cavernous space designed to look like a section of a city ravaged by war. Three trees, inexplicably preserved from the destruction, stand spaced apart, overlooking a scene of otherwise complete desolation. Here, the audience encounters a detailed wasteland strewn with rubble, the scorched remnants of civilization half buried throughout, as two paths snake their way toward the main theater space, not yet fully visible itself. Whether intentional or not, the artifacts still legible amid the rubble point their way toward the play that will follow. A [End Page 399] child’s red scooter, emblem of carefree mobility and possibility, lays crushed; the wire framing of a bed’s boxspring rests beside this, a twisted mockery of a space where, once, someone was able to sleep. A sedan of indeterminate make sits nearby, glowing from within as the ceaseless crackling of embers emerges from hidden speakers. The piercing sounds of flyovers by unseen jets informs the audience that this devastation represents the result of an ongoing conflict, and that they are entering an imaginary version of what is all-too-real for all-too-many, one where death, loss, and destruction can be visited from unseen forces well above and beyond one’s own limited reach. Shrunk shanks and wide worlds, indeed. And, as this play bears out, not dependent upon age for making the force of this disparity fully felt.

This wasteland remains invisible to the audience during the performance itself, and the main stage brings a marked shift in perspective. Set design here is smaller in scale: a modest rectangular stage thrusts outward; broad center stairs ascend, then branch to thinner ones on the left and right; four doors stand on the sides, two at the base and two at the apex of the narrower stairs. After such sweeping scope, this is the audience’s world for the entirety of the play itself, giving the performance a sense of intimacy, of localizing the action’s trauma in more particular and personal terms. Every bit of the stage remains whole and intact, save two sections, one front-left and one...