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Very disappointing...

Some things I liked some I did not.

Did you people see the same film I saw?

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Though Nicol Williamson performs outstandingly in the final scene, his overall performance is extremely uneven. At times he delivers his lines with brio or with subtle astuteness, but often he comes across as disengaged and bored. He too frequently resorts to snarling or to expressionless recitation, and only occasionally does he convincingly convey the tortured psyche of Macbeth. His delivery of the great "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy is the worst rendition that I have ever beheld. On the whole, his performance drags down this production.Jane Lapotaire is excellent in her opening scene and in her final scene, but less impressive in the intervening scenes (especially in the scene with Banquo's ghost). She pretty badly misjudges a few of her lines. Still, if her overall performance had been matched by Williamson's performance, this production would have been better than it is.Tony Doyle is generally excellent as Macduff, and James Hazeldine is quite good in the difficult role of Malcolm. James Bolam is considerably less entertaining as the porter in this production than as Touchstone in "As You Like It" (though the fault may lie with Shakespeare more than with the actor).Most of the other performances are pretty good, though there are quite a few other instances of misjudged renderings of lines. The sets and lighting are fine, and the production is to be commended for omitting very little of the text (apart from the spurious III.v and the spurious bits of IV.i). In short, this production is certainly worth watching but is disappointingly short of what it could and should have been.

In spite of the professionals involved, this production is inherently amateurish. The actors give an impression of simply reading their lines, not living them. Perhaps it's the play's fault. It's stuffed with even more quotations than Hamlet. The words are so familiar that it seems impossible for any stage performance to do them justice. Watching this version it struck me that I must virtually know the whole text by heart already, and the actors were not giving these passages the delivery they required. Most of the speeches need to be thundered out with heavy, over-dramatic emphasis, not self-consciously thrown away. Macbeth questions himself to start with, sure, until his wife screws him to the sticking-point, but once in for a penny he's in for a pound. That's the way it's written. The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon ! What happened to that line ? It seemed to be completely re-written and tamely paraphrased. Williamson is an odd and different actor. He's watchable, but sometimes strangely unconvincing. He was best in the Bofors Gun, and Laughter in the Dark, both stories where the main character is his own victim. Macbeth is not fully as determinedly self- destructive as Williamson makes him out to be, and as he is portrayed in this production. Macbeth, as the play's opening tells us, was a dynamic, decisive man, conned into his crimes by his wife and the witches. Outside forces. Shakespeare is frequently concerned with the question of free will. Was Macbeth fated to take the course of action that he did ? Had he a choice ? This topic also arises in other plays.

Enter the myth of the tyrant and his end. The story is so well known that it does not surprise us any more. Macbeth is superstitious, so he believes oracles. But he is on the dark side of the moon, so he only accepts oracles from witches, the weird sisters who are three of course. More about it later. He is a military man, a soldier, a warrior, so he believes in violence, and yet he knows he should be cautious, so he hesitates, but once he has crossed his Rubicon, that is going to be his Styx he cannot come back at all and will go right through his fate. But he is weak in a way, in his very hesitation, and he needs some support that he finds in his Lady Macbeth, a very sly, neurotic and even vicious woman who ends badly since she started badly, thus expanding another title into "All's bad that ends bad." And it sure does.We are in Scotland, with England in the background, as usual and as always. When will Scotland be of age and walk on her own feet? The old king is murdered by Macbeth who seizes the throne and luckily the two sons of the old king, Malcolm and Donalbain, have managed to leave before the assassination. They are accused of the assassination of course. And after that first crime Macbeth is on a killing road and he gets rid of his own associate Banquo and his family, and he will go on and on, including the whole family and household of Macduff. When you come to the end of the play you can count a good dozen, if not more, of assassinations of nobles and their families. If we counted the servants and household people we would probably come close to one hundred. And that's when everything is getting sour because of the initial crime. The prediction or prophesy of the three weird sisters is of course sibylline. Macbeth is to be killed by a man not born from a woman and when Great Birnam Wood shall advance against Dunsinane hill. He will be killed by Macduff who was ripped out of his mother's womb and the coming army of Malcolm cuts branches in Great Birnam Wood and carries them in front so that the wood is moving to Dunsinane. But in the meantime Lady Macbeth had become completely insane with guilt, sleepwalking and washing her hands all the time, in fact rubbing them all the time. And she dies, commits suicide just before the final battle. Malcolm arrives in Dunsinane after Macbeth's death and is given the crown.This production is contained mostly inside Macbeth's castle with essentially one outside setting for the three witches who work under a dolmen, or standing stones, finding in that a Celtic background. Yet these three weird sisters are not plain witches. They are a typical impersonation of the triple goddess Shakespeare likes so much. First the triple goddess herself, Hecate, the goddess of the underworld and death, who is here the "boss" of the three weird sisters, then Selene, the goddess of the moon and night, and finally Diana, the goddess of life in the forest and pregnant women. This triple goddess is often referred to as Demeter and her symbols are either a pinecone or a female wolf. Then you have the three Furies or Erinyes who are spinning, measuring and cutting the thread of our life. Then you have many others in Europe. For example the Germanic trinity of women — the three Beten. Their given names are Ambet, Borbet, Wilbet, standing for earth, the sun and the moon, respectively red, white and black goddesses.What is surprising is the mention of these three witches in Elizabethan times. Shakespeare probably took advantage of the slight relaxation Elizabeth introduced concerning witches probably since her mother Anne Boleyn was accused of witchcraft. Unluckily for witches James I was to retighten the vice on witchcraft because he was really afraid if not superstitious about it. Is Shakespeare alluding to that fact? Difficult to know, even if Macbeth is positioned in Scotland. Yet the play was written in 1606, three years after the coronation of James I in London. In Shakespeare's days the connection must have been made. It would be interesting to find out what the reaction of the new king of England was.The pattern of the elimination of all the protagonists except those who managed to escape Macbeth's clutch before he could catch them. The present production is slightly surprising by the appearance of a second young man, the age of Malcolm, the new king, in front of the people assembled at that time in a circle around Malcolm. This young man is outside the circle, between the circle and the dead body of Macbeth on the steps leading to the throne and the image turns reddish and fades out in that reddish shade. We can understand it may be the brother Donalbain with thus some insinuation from the director that the two brothers are going to recreate the Cain and Abel biblical myth. But I do not see that in the text of the play. That kind of situation is not common in Shakespeare, though I can think of two brothers in Titus Andronicus: of course Titus and Marcus, but there is no rivalry between the two, and Saturninus and Bassianus, the two sons of the dead emperor who are going to enter a conflict that will lead the elder son and brother to killing his younger brother. But this case is not common. There are many rivalries between couples of men but most of them are not brothers and not even relatives.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

WARNING: if you do not know the play Macbeth, I refer to the ending, so please do not read this if you wish to keep the ending a surprise!*****Most of the later, stylized BBC Shakespeare TV-films have impressed me to some degree. Not so, Macbeth. While the highly stylized setting was effective in parts, the actors seemed to misunderstand much of the play, the ironies and character development. Lady Macbeth was especially guilty of this, during the speech in which she asks the "spirits which tend on mortal thoughts" to unsex her. The point of the speech is that Lady Macbeth is asking to be made sexless, remorseless and resolute. This Lady Macbeth, however, throws herself onto the (convenient) bed, legs spread wide in an almost masturbatory speech. I began to wonder at this point if she had actually read the play, or was being given her lines scene at a time! Sadly, the performance only got worse. Macbeth was marginally better, although the use of the "evil" rasping voice for his murderous thoughts, contrasted with the "manly" voice in the parts where his conscience is awakened makes for a very two dimensional tragic hero. Yes, that's right, Macbeth is a tragic hero, who is bought to downfall by his ambition and paranoia. Instead, the interpretation Jack Gold has given the play turns it into something resembling a 19th century melodrama, with an evil villain, pious king and Malcolm, and a heroic Macduff, completely ignoring the irony of Malcolm's statement of Macbeth as a butcher (Macduff, carrying Macbeth's head is visually the only butcher on stage) and the fiend-like Lady Macbeth (who we last saw wracked with guilt, sleep walking, only to kill herself later out of despair in the knowledge of what they have done). The introduction of the Weird Sisters, who rise out of stone was impressive. It is a pity the rest of the production did not follow suit.