Review of Macbeth Production

Review of Macbeth Production

On the 28th October 2002, I went to see a production of William

Shakespeare's Macbeth, starring Sean Bean as Macbeth, and directed by

Edward Hall. I was looking forward to seeing this particular

production, as I am a huge fan of Lord Of the Rings, and was excited

about seeing one of the cast on stage, and because of Sean Bean's

performance in the film, I had high expectations of the play.

The play opened with a massive thunder crack that had a large part of

the audience (or, at the least our school party) accidentally throwing

their sweets over the row in front of them in pure shock. The lights

suddenly going out in the auditorium, instead of being gently dimmed,

accompanied this thunder. The stage lighting in this play was used

very effectively to show different locations on quite a limiting set.

The stage was a sort of semi circle shape, and in the centre, there

was a circle of metal grills where different coloured light was shone

through the floor to create different effects, and the shadows cast by

this floor lighting were more sinister and strange than the normal

overheads. Green light was shone through for any scenes that were set

outdoors, which looked eerie and natural at the same time, which was

very effective. As the set had to be adapted to so many different

rooms, the use of light was successful, as it was easy to tell apart

the different locations (e.g. Macduff's house, and Macbeth's castle).

There was little music used in the production, but the little that

there was, was used at the right times to add atmosphere to the

scenes. When the witches started singing at the beginning, it was

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...tly. Lady Macbeth

(played by Samantha Bond) was also very believable in her role.

However, the one member of the cast that I thought was slightly

presence-less was the Banquo. He was far superior as the ghost of

Banquo than he was as the living Banquo, and his silent presence at

the side of the stage was frequently very unsettling.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this production, and I may well see it

again in the future, however one thing that I found to some extent

frustrating was the way that the director had merged the present with

the past, as it wasn't accurate, and just seemed out of place. The

chronology inexplicably jumps from dark medieval Scotland to what

appears to be 20th century soldiers running around with machine guns,

storm trooper uniforms, elevators and helicopters which can be a

little confusing.