Macbeth (Season 6, Episode 2)

First transmitted 5th November 1983

Nicol Williamson and Jane Lapotaire go about the murdering of sleep

Cast: Nicol Williamson (Macbeth), Jane Lapotaire (Lady Macbeth), Tony Doyle (Macduff), James Hazeldine (Malcolm), Ian Hogg (Banquo), Mark Dignam (Duncan), John Rowe (Lennox), Gawn Grainger (Ross), David Lyon (Angus), James Bolam (Porter), Jill Baker (Lady Macduff), Brenda Bruce (First Witch), Eileen Way (Second Witch), Anne Dyson (Third Witch), John Woodnutt (Doctor)

Director: Jack Gold

It’s the nature of the slightly slap-dash planning of this series that, as we reach the final 10 or so films, the series has already covered most of the true classics of the cannon and is largely left with the Shakespearean equivalent of a few minnows. One of the few tent poles left is of course The Scottish Play, here finally working its way onto screen. This was hardly an unknown play to the viewing public, as the murderous Thane had already been brought to the screen several times, both on film and TV. Combine that with an unending parade of productions on the stage and so many schooldays memories, there can’t have been many people who didn’t already feel themselves familiar with this notoriously unlucky work.

Which is just as well really, as there is very little here that will add to anyone’s visual memory of the play. In fact it seems almost a crying shame that there wasn’t a more inventive production of this play, taking advantage of some of the more daring work that had come before. Of course, like Cymbeline, maybe this one just fades compared to the daring brilliance of Jane Howell’s Henriad but this is a rather flat and (whisper it) dull production of a play that is all about relentless momentum punctured by moments of introspection.

In fact it seems like a call back to the early days of the series, before the Miller influence. Where better to set a play set in a Dark Ages Scotland, but Dark Ages Scotland. The inventive playing with form and locations that Jonathan Miller used so well in, for example Antony and Cleopatra, is replaced with a straight placing of the play in its Braveheart style location. Layer on top of that the simple fact that few things look as dated to our 21^st-century eyes than a load of actors with big wigs and rough clothing trying to give us the impression of olden times. Throw in the low budget cyclorama backcloth and some unconvincing grassy knolls and you end up with a production that visually looks every inch of its 32 years of age, in a way none of the productions perhaps since Henry V have done.

Actually that is quite a major problem I had with this production. If you are going down the ultra-traditional route, then that needs to be reflected in your casting. Here the cast are uniformly, despite their tough costuming and dark ages chic, a collection of RSC stalwarts who look and sound like they have stepped straight from an elocution class into the fray of battle. Not one of them convinces as a warrior or soldier, fatally crippling (for me) the concept below the waterline. In name only does this feel like a warrior culture, or a society brimming with barely concealed violence: aside perhaps from Nicol Williamson in places, the rest of them seem overwhelmingly well mannered and (how else can I put it?) English. For a play that has embraced the Scottish setting so vividly, there isn’t a single damn earthy Scotsman in it. It’s a patrician feeling show, like watching members of the Raj stage a little production of the piece.

Which is a shame as there are some good ideas here, and Jack Gold clearly wants to tackle some of them head-on. Gold stresses the psychology of the play. In this he is helped enomously by Nicol Williamson’s trademark intensity. Once described as an actor who all but physically attacked the text until it revealed its secrets, Williamson goes at it here, his intense and visceral performance really pushing the idea of a Thane who was (to be honest) already suffering from some real issues, even before the witches pop up (in a lovely touch there is a hint of sadness in his voice when the witches disappear in A1 S3). What is a particularly nice touch in this performance is that Williamson’s Macbeth actually gives the impression of being an almost gentle soul at first, out of his depth in world affairs and meekly dependent on his wife and his friends, often nervously fiddling with his hands. (Hands are a slight motif in this production, with the camera focusing at points on hands before the actions they commit. For example, the camera follows Lady Macbeth and Macbeth into the dining room to greet Duncan, the camera zooming in on their hands then past them into Duncan. Even this, though, is a rather obvious choice for a play famous for hand washing and wringing from its female lead).

The shock of committing murder almost makes Macbeth catatonic at first. However, when he discovers the capability for wickedness within himself, then it’s a slow spiral of Macbeth nudging himself a step at a time to see how far he will go – reluctance and even anxious timidity when planning Duncan’s death give way to a real adamantine quality when planning the murder of the Macduffs. By the end he’s left hollowed out, almost darkly amused by the attack on his castle and the efforts of so many to kill him. It’s a fine performance that brings the largest degree of interpretative originality to the production.

Gold internalises a lot of this as well by making the majority of the supernatural elements things that Macbeth sees but we do not – so no Banquo’s ghost, no shimmering dagger, no image of spirits telling Macbeth of the future to come. Instead for each of these the camera trains in largely on Macbeth’s face. This is most effective in his second scene with the witches. Crouched under a stone altar in the wilderness, with his head above a steaming cauldron with the camera tight on Williamson’s face it’s unclear whether he is reacting to something out of shot – or whether the witches are simply getting him high on whatever is in that cauldron. When Banquo’s ghost comes a calling, the camera tracks back to give us part of the same view as the other lords in attendance have of Macbeth’s unsettling reaction to what – to us as well – is little more than an empty chair.

The focus on the psychology extends just as swiftly to Lady Macbeth. Jane Lapotaire’s reading is from the start overtly sexual – it’s very clear what sort of power she can exert over Macbeth from the start – and her cry to be “unsexed” is effectively portrayed by an orgasmic writhing on a bed, the camera positioned above her, Lapotaire directly addressing it, as if inviting us (as well as the devil) to join her. This works quite nicely for positioning Lady Macbeth as initially the person more in touch with an understanding of the world and what needs to be done – and also allows Williamson’s Macbeth to be part pupil, part horny shy teenager around her. Her sharp, domineering presence drives the remainder of the first part of the play. It’s an absence that is then sorely missed later on.

The energy she beings effectively start to drop off in the remaining part of the action, as the consequences of events begin to take effect. Suddenly from the coronation onwards she is a startled, anxious woman – clearly already aware that Macbeth’s heart has grown cold and hard. She is a woman now without a pace, who has lost the position she had to attain an empty prize. The sleepwalking scene after that is a formality – she’s dead already by this point, a frightened and startled woman openly scared of the man her actions have helped to create.

Well she might be, as this is a world of violence. The murderers set upon Banquo with a gusto, frantically stabbing him in a carefully concealed ambush, all sense of hesitation and doubt excised. In a nice touch, they themselves are then swiftly dispatched by a psychopathic Seyton, here introduced as the third murderer. Seyton then takes the lead in the slaughter of the Macduff children in one of the production’s most effective scenes. In a parody of a child’s game, the kid is pushed from killer to killer, confused and disorientated, until finally lifted of the ground and thrown onto Seyton’s waiting sword (needless to say this is all watched by a distraught Lady Macduff). After this the final battle seems quite restrained: Macbeth at first can barely contain his amusement at the idea that death might wait at the end of Siward’s sword, before fear and eventual defiance in the face of the raging Macduff.

The production also successfully establishes the idea that everyone watches everyone else. When Malcolm is proclaimed Thane of Cumberland, the camera focuses on each Thane in turn – all of them staring unsmilingly at Malcom. Is it any wonder he sees evil in men’s smiles? No surprise that an armed guard searches Macduff on arrival in England. Or that, after being proclaimed as King, Malcolm stares with nervousness with the rest of the assembled lords as Fleance walks forward to collect the crown. Again the camera cuts to each Thane in turn as their blank, unclear faces stare at him. Are they wondering if he will seize the crown? Are they pondering following him? Will the cycle start again? All options are open in this production.

So there is a lot of promising material here. It’s just a shame that it never really makes much of an impression on the viewer, and never really feels like it is breaking new ground in the way some of these other productions have done so. Nicely done as it is, it’s hardly unique to suggest the Scotland of the play is a land destined to have the witches continually drive it towards destruction (in this production they pop up at brief moments, but never in a sustained enough way to suggest a deliberate design decision). A large part of the lack of impact is linked to the supporting cast. Many of the parts in Macbeth are rather ill defined on paper, so rely on strong performances to create individual characters. This production though largely fails to deliver that – I can’t think of a single supporting performance that really lingers in the mind. Others, like Tony Doyle’s Macduff, are simply overdone. I can’t even picture Ian Hogg’s Banquo, which is itself an indictment. The production just never really comes alive at any point. Simply put I don’t care.

So what have you really got with this production? Some decent ideas, some good uses of the tricks of television (particularly with music, which it probably uses more effectively than others of the series). There are two decent performances in the lead roles, in particular Jane Lapotaire’s sensitive Lady Macbeth. But what this really is a perfectly serviceable, rather safe and traditional production of Macbeth, no different than a hundred other stage performances before it. You’ll get more or less what you expected when you opened the tin – and I can’t remember a production delivering so little in terms of imagination of a major work in this series since Hamlet.

Conclusion

Not exactly a disappointment, but also not a success. Nicol Williamson plays the Thane of gusto, Jane Lapotaire is terrific as the wife, there are a few flashes of interest but this production plays it overwhelmingly safe and, as a result, only really succeeds in making something incredibly bland and unexciting. Bearing in mind it was screened four years after the Ian McKellen/Judi Dench Macbeth, and that productions by Orson Welles and Roman Polanski were already in existence at the time, it’s hard to imagine this even getting in a top ten of on-screen Macbeth adaptations today, let alone anywhere near a top ten of this series. Not the worst, not the best, just a bit meh.

NEXT TIME: The Who’s Roger Daltrey gets tackled up in The Comedy of Errors. Yes you read that right.

Antony and Cleopatra (Series 3 Episode 6)

First Transmitted 8 May 1981

Colin Blakely and Jane Lapotaire's love shatters world peace

Cast: Jane Lapotaire (Cleopatra), Colin Blakely (Mark Antony), Ian Charleson (Octavius Caesar), Emrys James (Enobarbus), Esmond Knight (Lepidus), Donald Sumpter (Pompey), Lynn Farleigh (Octavia), Janet Key (Charmian), Darien Angadi (Alexas), Cassie McFarlane (Iras), Simon Chandler (Eros), Anthony Pedley (Agrippa), David Neal (Proculeius), Harry Waters (Thyreus), George Innes (Menas), Geoffrey Collins (Dolabella), Mohammed Shamsi (Mardian), John Paul (Canidius), Howard Goorney (Soothsayer)
Director: Jonathan Miller

The first season of Miller’s custodianship ends with an intimate, low-key production of one of Shakespeare’s grandest classics. And this production perhaps shows how far the series has come when compared to the earlier historical epics, such as Richard II, The Henries and, most obviously of all, Julius Caesar. Unlike the earlier plays, this takes paintings – specifically the work of Veronese – as its principle inspiration and leaves behind the literalism of historical accuracy.

Miller also of course develops his own interpretation of events, rooted right back into the casting. Miller saw the play as a drama about two former greats who have passed the peak of their powers, and are struggling to deal with and accept a world that has left them behind. Lapotaire and Blakely appear plainer and smaller than many actors cast as the characters – particularly Blakely who looks like a dwarfish faded sports star. Lapotaire is far less glamorous than previous incarnations of the character, and here is a woman aware that her position is now the key part of her allure.

While pulling the glamour out of the central couple, Miller also brings the scale of the play down to fit the small screen. With its vast number of scenes and grand continent-crossing sweep, the play is an epic, often played on the widest of stages. However Miller sets the majority of the action in a series of small, almost claustrophobic locations, with the camera zooming in on conversations. Miller also makes extensive use again of long takes, with the camera moving between parts of the scene and around characters and events. Performances in turn are defiantly real and grounded, with the characters made into flesh and blood human beings rather than heroes from history.

This atmosphere of faded grandeur matches up well with the visuals of the play. Taking Veronese’s The Family of Darius Before Alexander (see above) here as the main inspiration, Miller creates a romantic, renaissance-era style and design that bears no resemblance to actual Roman culture. Interiors are skilfully disguised utility locations, with black set construction decorated by painterly cloths and drapings that add an imperialistic luxury and style to the sets. Backdrops for the outside sequences are an almost blinding white that makes no attempt to present a realistic exterior. The painterly style of grandness – particularly embraced by the Egyptian characters as opposed to the plainer styles of Octavius and his followers – also shows how the characters themselves are reaching for a grander past just out of reach of memory. When Antony dresses in an elaborate army uniform or Cleopatra reclines in a cloth-strewn luxury tent, they seem like ageing film stars harking back to past glories of large budget film sets and costumes now a few sizes too small.

Miller uses a few nifty camera tricks to point up the differences between Rome and Egypt, particularly in visual cuts. The first transition uses a wipe that slowly pushes Egypt out of shot in favour of Rome. When Enobarbus speaks of Cleopatra’s beauty, the film jump-cuts to a close up of Octavia, as if stressing she cannot compare. Audio bridges are used throughout to move from scene to scene. Light (and the lack of it) is also used effectively. At the film’s start Antony and Cleopatra enter through a large white entranceway into a dark, cloth decorated court – an area they will not leave again until their disaster against Octavius. After his attempted suicide, the camera lowers to Antony’s perspective and a flood of light from the corner of the screen obscures the vision of the viewer just as Antony’s vision is obscured by approaching death. Cleopatra’s death sees her sitting facing the only point of light in the monument, with her back to the camera. The aim always is to show the reality just behind the illusion the central characters are trying to sustain.

Colin Blakely’s Antony is a key part of this. A short, stocky actor with a working class hardness just beneath the surface, he is a wonderfully off the wall choice to play one half of the greatest lovers of all time. He is, it seems, constantly out of his depth – from his entrance he is enraptured by Cleopatra and constantly, even in the aftermath of fits of rage, finds himself deferring to her and her moods. He is, above all, a rather unsophisticated soldier, at his most comfortable with his men before battle or when drinking on Pompey’s boat. At times he comes across like a whining child – complaining to Octavia or bitterly sulking in A3 S11 when Cleopatra loses him the battle, almost in tears at her lack of faith in him. When asking Eros to take his life, he even bitterly complains “you promised” when Eros demurs. Low and high camera angles at crucial points constantly stress his lack of stature, making him seem even more impotent and weak. At points, he takes control of himself and seems the man of legends, but he is a man on a downward slope, unable to check – or even fully recognise – the pace of his descent. It’s a lack of awareness that makes him sympathetic – as well as frustrating.

Lack of awareness cannot be levelled against Jane Lapotaire’s Cleopatra. She is a woman constantly performing, aware of the effect that every one of her actions has on those around her. She controls and manipulates Antony’s tempestuous moods with ease, and her influence over him is demonstrated well in A3 S7 as she prowls behind him in the back of the shot while he rejects the advice of those around him. A1 S3 shows she is willing to appear girlish and innocent, fondly playing cat’s cradle with Charmian while waiting for Antony – similar to the light playful attitude she is happy to show in A2 S5 while awaiting news from the messenger and in A1 S5 where she allows an illusion of equality with her servant (an attitude she is quick to drop when they say the wrong thing).

Lapotaire also brings a continual sense of vulnerability to her performance. Her reaction to news of Antony’s departure is part staged, but there is real fear and desperation in her at the thought of losing him. It’s moments like this that show the real love she holds for Antony, beneath her appreciation of the benefits of having him around. News of his marriage reduces her to an emotional breakdown and floods of genuine tears. Bu there is still a sense of realpolitik behind her actions, that makes her such an intriguing character.When all seems lost in A3 S13 she is open to hear Caesar’s version of her relationship – letting out an understanding “oh” when told she has been bewitched. Mortified, horrified and pained beyond words by Antony’s death, she still mixes this with a willingness to hear Caesar out and plan for her own possible future.

The constant beats and changes in the relationship between these two characters are skilfully played by both actors and well directed. The underlying sense of need that lies between the two characters is constantly seen, and their physical ease and naturalness stresses the intimacy between them. Though there are flashes of anger, these are short intense bursts from each of them – and the tenderness and relief of moments of reconciliation – such as in A3 S12 – are moving and above all feel real. The loyalty between them is demonstrated time and time again – and the despair when the one fears the other lost is raw and all consuming. As a depiction of a grand passion it is a like a wildfire that has consumed all the materials feeding it.

For the other parts, in another fine example of Miller’s invention, Enobarbus – often played as a plain and honest soldier – is here seen as a sleazy freeloader, constantly taking advantage of the perks of his ill-deserved position. At every instance, he eats and drinks to excess, bellows and makes loud and inappropriate comments. His presence as Antony’s chief advisor casts as much a reflection over Antony’s lack of judgement as it does over his own unsuitability. What James’ Enbarbus does well is to make his many personality flaws appear to others as disguised virtues. The real man emerges when getting drunk on Pompey’s yacht or deciding to flee Antony. The contempt with which he is met after his defection demonstrates his true standing amongst his contemporaries. Moments of genuine feeling emerge – taking advantage of Antony as he is, he clearly cares for him deeply – and when talking of Cleopatra’s beauty he finds himself drawn into reverie despite himself. But it is still a striking re-examination of the character as mildly unpleasant chancer.

Ian Charleson adds another excellent performance as a patrician and moralistic Octavius, saddened by Antony’s descent, rather than consumed by ambition. He seems determined to do what is required of him as a leader and looks scornfully at the perceived lack of worth of the other contenders for leadership – he is notably uncomfortable and eager to depart at Pompey’s party. His mixed emotions over Antony are clearly expressed when he weeps at the news of Antony’s death – he may be angered at the man for the ill-treatment of his sister (with whom he is clearly close) but there is a clear regard still for who he was (an attitude that is also clear when he bemoans Antony’s fall in A1 S4). This sense of duty and stern moralism also explains his clear lack of interest in Cleopatra’s charms.

Donald Sumpter brings  a lot of swagger to Pompey; Janet Key is a loyal and touching Charmian; Esmond Knight’s Lepidus is a well meaning man out of his depth; and David Neal is a stand out amongst Octavius’ coterie of advisors. Many regular players from the BBC series crop up in key parts and give their expected quality performances. But unlike other Miller productions, the focus is overwhelmingly on the central characters to the detriment of the supporting parts – this is one of the few productions where a minor character fails to emerge as a particular point of interest.

Miller’s main issue with the play is to resolve some of the central issues of its construction, created by Shakespeare himself. These are not completely successful. It is still an overlong production and Act 4, as always, with its yo-yoing of fortune between Octavius and Antony in battle, overextends and overplays some of the same points a few too many times. There are some key cuts – and the battle of Antioch is replaced altogether with an onscreen picture and some text from Plutarch. The downside of the smaller-scale approach is that the importance of the events of Act 4 to the future of the world is lost slightly in the crush. Some characters also fail to come really into focus – Octavius’ advisors seem to have interchangeable personalities and some characters, such as Menas, shift and change attitudes according to the demands of the plot.

By stressing a low-key, less glamourous approach to its lead characters, this production perhaps challenges expectations more than any other production so far with the exception of Miller’s own Taming of the Shrew. It finds constant new lights to shine on characters throughout. It won’t perhaps please viewers who want the epic feeling of Shakespeare’s history, but this is a striking reimagining of Shakespeare’s play.

Conclusion

With some excellent performances, a consistent visual imagery throughout and strong, imaginative direction, this is a very well done version of Shakespeare’s play. It doesn’t resolve all the issues of Shakespeare’s original – the vast number of scenes and occasional lapses of pace in the action – and in working so heavily on the interpretation of the principal characters, the supporting roles get a little lost. However there are plenty of fascinating ideas and interpretative energy here as always, and the lead performances hold the play together extremely well.

Next time: OK the controversial one. Anthony Hopkins blacks up as the Moor and Bob Hoskins plays his dark angel in Othello.