Abstract
Ninagawa died, aged 80, on 12 May 2016 and so this was a posthumous performance. Indeed, this production was a resurrection of his Macbeth which was first staged over 30 years ago. It was, in every way, a fitting memorial for a director whose sense of magnificence and cinematic beauty characterized all of his Shakespeare work. But it was, for this reviewer, curiously incomplete and, at times, strangely mystifying. At a symposium, the following afternoon, held in the Japanese Embassy on Piccadilly, Michael Dobson (current Director of the Shakespeare Institute) and Michael Billington (The Guardian’s theatre critic) spoke of the poignant intensity of Ninagawa’s work in general and this Macbeth in particular but, try as I might, I just could not recognize their insistence on its emotional impact.
The Barbican has a huge stage and Ninagawa’s epic theatre filled the entire space. A couple of bent crones (Yoko Haneda and Yuko Kato) stumbled on from either side of the stage to open a pair of enormous wooden shutters. These revealed a set of panelled translucent screens through which we saw much of the action. This idea of a framed and screened plane of vision felt much closer to cinema than theatre and at various points, such as the murder of Banquo which took place under a gorgeous shower of blossoms beneath a huge and burgeoning cherry tree, Ninagawa’s astonishing juxtaposition of violence and terrible beauty was extraordinary but these moments were thinly spread. Elsewhere the screens were removed but I couldn’t find any rationale for them being present or not.
More theatrically successful were those points at which characters in the play transcended their acting space and moved the focus from the closed filmic illusion to interact with the spectator. As Macbeth (Masachika Ichimura) pondered on the awkward presence of the Prince of Cumberland, he had one foot in the acting space and his other on the top of a flight of steps leading off the downstage edge into the auditorium. It was at those points when the production attended to its audience that it seemed most effective.
Kappa Senoh’s sets and Jusaburo Tsujimura’s costumes set the production firmly in a world of Samurai warriors. The frequently changed gorgeous costumes and a plethora of supernumeraries (the programme lists a cast of 33) added to the epic grandeur of the show but at times, the impression was that spectacle was more important than insight. The final battle scene, for instance, seemed to last for ages while Macbeth carved his way through a host of doomed opponents.
The use of recorded sound was another technique that seemed to have been imported from the big screen. As Macbeth and Banquo encountered the witches for the first time, they rode in on horseback. The two horses (played pantomime style but for anything but laughs) shook their manes and pawed the dirt and their neighs and whinnies were relayed over loud speakers (Akira Honma is credited with ‘sound effects’). Later, the theatre was filled with the sounds of a flock of birds taking to wing but apart from a documentary accuracy, I couldn’t really see the point of this. We first saw Lady Macbeth (Yuko Tanaka) astride of a cello and miming her heart out – a miscalculated sequence which only spoke to the production’s desire for verisimilitude at the same time as it underlined its shortcomings in achieving it. Perhaps most intrusive throughout was the underscoring of dramatic action with Western classical music. Most conspicuous in this respect was the use of Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings which appeared, quite randomly it seemed, at several points.
Perhaps the production’s finest moment was the encounter of Macduff (Keita Oishi) and Macbeth. As they faced one another a blood-red full moon was illuminated upstage. Macduff told Macbeth of his untimely birth and the two of them closed together. Macbeth, facing upstage, was split by Macduff’s sword and all ambient noise immediately ceased. The red moon turned suddenly blue as Macbeth dropped to the ground. In the dim silence, the production seemed to signify more here about failure and despair than anywhere else.
Any coda following this had to be anticlimactic and indeed, as Malcolm addressed his new assembly of courtiers, his perfunctory final speech seemed drawn out beyond all reasonable measure. The two crones returned to close the shutters as the music increased in volume. Within seconds, the entire auditorium was on its feet in enthusiastic applause. I wonder what they had seen that I couldn’t…