Abstract
2024 has been a year of ‘big’ Macbeths in London, in multiple senses of the word: big production values, big venues, big names. After opening in Liverpool at the end of 2023, then moving to Edinburgh in January 2024, Simon Godwin’s ‘immersive’ production (or at least marketed as such) of Macbeth starring Ralph Fiennes arrived at Canada Water’s Dock X in February and March, before travelling across the Atlantic to Washington, DC. Meanwhile, Max Webster’s production, with David Tennant in the title role, ran at the Donmar Warehouse from December 2023 to February 2024, then transferred to the Harold Pinter Theatre from October to December 2024.
It is absolutely no slight to say that Sioned Jones’s production for Shakespeare in the Squares was not a ‘big’ Macbeth in the same way as Godwin’s or Webster’s. The venues for Jones’s production, however, inescapably brought a sense of epic grandeur, performed as it was in churches around the English capital. The building that housed the performance I attended – St Giles Cripplegate – is one of the few medieval churches remaining in London, and offered a magnificent setting for the cast of five to perform Shakespeare’s tragedy. In her programme note, Jones describes the performance spaces offered by the churches as being ‘very similar in shape to the Elizabeth stage’ and ‘echo[ing] the quality of ancient castles’, as well as ‘their religious purpose […] holding [Macbeth] in silent judgment’. Although Jones’s production in fact rarely drew explicit attention to the church setting during the performance, the imposing, hallowed nature of the centuries-old space was an inescapable presence throughout.
In the programme, Jones describes how the company ‘worked hard to make Macbeth as likeable, relatable and funny as possible’ at the play’s opening to provoke ‘wonder at the full extent of his demise’. As Macbeth, Gavin Molloy achieved this sense of affability in the early scenes through interactions with those in attendance: during 1.4, he and Banquo (Cathy Walker) returned triumphant from war with beer bottles in hand, encouraging celebratory exchanges and fist-bumps with audience members. While this succeeded in initially positioning Molloy’s Macbeth as a charismatic man of the people (at least on the surface), Jones built in British pantomime-style interactions at other points with mixed success. In 1.7, when Lady Macbeth (also Cathy Walker) explained her plan to inebriate Duncan’s attendants, she co-opted two spectators in the front row to represent the king’s ‘two chamberlains’. The Macbeths then spoke directly to the audience members, as if convincing them to take the rap for the regicide they were planning to carry out. While the moment raised some laughs at the performance I attended, it was somewhat confusing from a plot perspective, and also felt tonally jarring after hearing Lady Macbeth emotionally describe ‘dash[ing] the brains out’ of her imagined infant only moments earlier.
Tone was also an issue elsewhere, with the three witches – reimagined by Jones as ‘fortune tellers’ – resulting in some of the production’s most uneven aspects. Costume designer Jida Akil’s simple, somewhat stereotypical costuming of the fortune tellers with shawls over their shoulders and scarves tied around their heads successfully created unity of appearance, but the performances by Sam D’Leon, Mohab Kaddah, and Molly Walker were more varied. While delivering the fortune tellers’ prophecies in 4.1, for example, Walker largely downplayed the comic potential of the role; Kaddah did too, whilst also remaining aware that he inherently looked and sounded somewhat comical in his fortune teller costume. In contrast, D’Leon fully leaned into pantomime comedy, delivering a performance reminiscent of Terry Jones playing Brian’s mother in Monty Python’s Life of Brian (dir. Jones, 1979). Extratextual additions by D’Leon (‘Charming!’, complete with a campy hand flourish, in response to Macbeth’s demands; ‘I don’t like this bit!’ just before delivering a prophecy) were so exaggerated they may as well have been delivered with a wink to the front row. While superficially entertaining in itself, D’Leon’s characterisation of his fortune teller not only undermined whether or not the prophecies should be taken seriously by either Macbeth or the audience, but also impacted my reception of the actor’s portrayal of other characters in the production. D’Leon also played Macduff, a role he performed entirely seriously, but his Pythonesque panto-style fortune teller lingered in my memory to undercut almost any weight he might have lent to this pivotal character in the play.
Looking beyond its tonal inconsistency, Jones’s Macbeth regularly offered some inspired directorial and performance choices that illuminated moments within the play in new and memorable ways. Cathy Walker’s choice to deliver Lady Macbeth’s soliloquy at the start of 2.2 – ‘That which hath made them drunk, hath made me bold’ – as if she were drunk, rapidly sobering up after Macbeth entered having ‘done the deed’, felt like an innovative take on the scene. Walker’s choice positioned the character not as the manipulative mastermind she is regularly performed as during the first act of the play, but as someone already struggling to cope with the nefarious choices she and her husband have rashly made together. Molly Walker’s performance of the Porter’s speech at the beginning of 2.3 stood as not just the best example of the production’s interactivity, but as one of the highlights of Jones’s Macbeth overall. The sequence naturally lends itself to fourth-wall-breaking performance choices: Macbeths at both Shakespeare’s Globe (directed by Abigail Graham) and the RSC (directed by Wils Wilson) in 2023 as well as Webster’s 2023/2024 Donmar Warehouse production, have also offered Porters who gleefully demolish the barrier between stage and auditorium. Walker’s Porter (credited as ‘Seyton’, and referring to herself as ‘Seyton the Porter’ at the end of the speech, to combine the two characters from the play) was an immediately engaging and amiable presence; her direct conversation with both the collective audience and individual members of it felt entirely natural. When only I and a few others responded to the Porter’s second ‘Knock! Knock!’ with the expected ‘Who’s there?’, Walker gravitated towards us with warmth and approval that meant her subsequent shouts of ‘Knock! Knock!’ were met with a rousing ‘Who’s there?’ from the whole audience. Walker undoubtedly drew on her background in immersive theatre for this role in particular (her past credits include Secret Cinema’s Guardians of the Galaxy and Immersive Everywhere’s Doctor Who: Time Fracture), but she ultimately emerged as Macbeth’s most adept, transformative, and versatile presence.
This was demonstrated most clearly in 4.2, which also featured the production’s most memorable directorial and performance choices. As Lady Macduff, Molly Walker brought an emotional depth and subtle realness to the character that can often prove difficult to achieve in performance due to her brief appearance in the play. Thanks to Walker’s understated choices grounded in sincerity, I truly believed in Lady Macduff’s sense of betrayal by her husband, in her sweet relationship with her young and naïve son (Cathy Walker), and in her desperate pleas with the murderer (Molloy) sent to kill her and her family. Cathy Walker’s transformation into Macduff’s young son was aided by her carrying a stuffed toy monkey as a companion or soother, which the character occasionally used as a puppet to speak to his mother. Molly Walker’s delivery of ‘God help thee, poor monkey’ was addressed to the toy, a lovely touch that was both humorous and helped build the authentic relationship that the two actresses managed to craft in the space of a single scene.
The programme credits Molloy separately as the murderer, but in performance he could just as easily have been Macbeth in disguise – costumed as he was all in black with small, dark glasses, and a wide-brimmed hat – carrying out the murder himself with gleeful malice. Indeed, such a reading would fit comfortably into Jones’s stated aim to focus solely on Macbeth as an ‘Everyman [who] becomes a Villain incrementally’, as Molloy’s callous murderer could not have been further removed from his man-of-the-people Macbeth at the start of the production. The character’s cruelty was brilliantly underscored at the scene’s conclusion: as the murderer carried Macduff’s dead son offstage, the monkey’s head appeared over his shoulder and, subverting the innocent puppetry from earlier in the scene, delivered the line, ‘He has killed me, mother’ – the murderer voicing the toy in a high-pitched tone to mockingly mimic his victim. The moment stood out as a particularly dark choice in a production that more often leant into light-heartedness, but was an inspired repositioning of a line from the play that can inadvertently draw a laugh in performance if played as written. It was moments such as this that ultimately made Jones’s production a success: tonal issues aside, there was enough inspiration and invention in both the directorial and performance choices to make this Macbeth a worthwhile addition to the play’s presence in London this year.