MACBETH
ALMEIDA

Rarely has an actor dared present such a low-key, domestic Macbeth as Simon Russell Beale in John Caird’s new production.
Critical reaction to this interpretation has, for the most part, been hostile. Audiences like their Shakespearean tyrants bloody where, at times, Russell Beale’s Macbeth is almost cuddly – his resolve as pudgy as his frame.
But while he does not possess the physique of a natural swashbuckler – from some angles he appears almost spherical – Russell Beale is an actor of real refinement, and his portrayal of Macbeth is accomplished and remarkable.
Whether it works in the context of the play is another matter.
Played out on a rough-hewn monochrome set of a type fast becoming a Shakespearean cliché, this is a production that never achieves a compelling sense of momentum. Staging is static and costumes are of a tweedy medieval type, insofar as it is possible to see them at all through the pervading gloom.
Such a crepuscular, restrained production needs a central performance to communicate the paranoia and raw, bowel-churning fear suggested by the text. These are lacking to the point that even the murder of Macduff’s wife and children, often a hair-raising, visceral moment, has a quality of disengagement about it.
Perhaps the director has determined that Macbeth is a play about mediocrity – a little man pushed beyond his capabilities by a shrewish wife – and, if so, the production is suitably domestic rather than epic in scope.
Banquo’s ghost appears not at a banquet but at an intimate dinner party; the politics of a nation riven by regicide are reduced to the status of a little local difficulty.
A wonderfully brittle performance by Emma Fielding as Lady Macbeth adds tautness to some slightly flaccid ensemble playing, though Tom Burke as Malcolm and Paul Higgins as Macduff elevate their important scene with first-rate comic timing.
This production does suffer in comparison with Max Stafford Clark’s audacious and terrifying Macbeth set among the warlords of contemporary Africa which wowed patrons of the Arcola Theatre last October. In comparison Caird’s Scottish Play, while carefully crafted and played with rare subtlety, is disappointingly bloodless.

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Until March 5