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MACBETH – INTERVIEW WITH DIRECTOR, JAMES EVANS
What has been your approach to adapting Macbeth for the stage?
It is an adaptation (like every production) – the script is a blueprint and needs to be interpreted
on stage. There is one specific constraint on this production in that I have been given a ninety
minute boundary! There are some logistical reasons for that, to do with our school audiences
and the actors’ working hours. The adaptation of the text starts with that premise. But
sometimes I find those things interesting – a restraint can make you be more creative.
How do you make choices about what to leave out?
If you run it all it will run about 2 hours and 15. We are losing about 45 minutes of the script.
For instance, the scenes with Hecate (Middleton’s additions after Shakespeare’s death). The
script that we have is already a truncated play. There were no quarto editions published during
Shakespeare’s lifetime. Macbeth only came to light in the First Folio of 1623, 7 years after he
died. So we have an echo or a resonance of the original full play that he perhaps wrote.
Fascinatingly, in the banquet scene with Banquo’s ghost, Lady Macbeth says, ‘This is the very
painting of your fear, this is the air drawn dagger that led you to Duncan’ (so she knows about
it – was there another scene after the murder where he tells her about seeing the imaginary
dagger?) Shakespeare himself edited and cut his plays quite heavily for performance. So the
idea that we have to do the full text as written is a fallacy. We don’t know what the original
performances were.
Does it impact on the intended meaning?
Macbeth can be more about politics or more about relationships, and I have chosen to focus
on the latter. The Macbeths are a couple that are successful and happy and therefore one of
the tragedies of the play is the breakdown in communication, fall apart and parted by death.
So it is the destruction of their relationship that is central. They strive for something that they
really want but when they get it, it is ‘hollow’. What did I do all that for? I.e. tomorrow and
tomorrow – the nihilistic Shakespeare. A reflection on power and how it corrupts people.
Shakespeare would have faced the same constraints as contemporary theatre directors do;
the impact of audience, time, weather, politics etc.
So, there are two ways to cut – chip away at each scene and trim those back or you can take
out entire scenes. I have mostly done the latter because I think the extended images work
well. So I have chopped out the murderers being present with Macbeth, suggesting that they
are already there ready to kill Banquo. We have lost the Doctor and the Gentlewoman, so the
sleepwalking scene becomes almost a soliloquy which becomes just a series of images that
Lady Macbeth describes that I hope are quite chilling
What is the context for this version of Macbeth?
I don’t like to impose a world on the play. I like it to speak for itself. Apart from the fact that the
performers wear contemporary costumes and I have envisaged that they are young, at the
start of their careers, are not cynical or jaded or bitter, but quite optimistic. So it becomes a
play about the thresholds that you cross. Macbeth crosses one and then another…a series of
points of no return. So context is a tricky one because I don’t want to pin it down. In my head
too much imposition clutters the play and text. Dropping a world on the play and making the
play serves that world is counter-productive.
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Lady Macbeth – ‘My dearest partner of greatness’ – is a giveaway. She and Macbeth are
equals and they know each other really well, these are the characters you can have the most
impact on. I wouldn’t say she starts as an evil character but I think she has a very strong
ambition for herself and her husband. As soon as the murder occurs, Macbeth feels instantly
guilty, but her guilt is a slow burn. Initially he is more swayed and led but in crossing the first
threshold, something in him dies and he goes on that trajectory toward becoming a tyrant. She
realises she wasn’t as tough as she thought she was. In my production, after that first scene
they won’t even touch each other anymore. They will be very separate. And that is her lifeline
and once he is ‘gone’, she loses her will to live.
What does Shakespeare demand of his performers?
The language is incredibly muscular. Fortunately for me the actors have been out on the road
doing shows in schools for four months already so they are ‘match fit’. Often actors come to
a play very raw. But my guys are ready to go and have had every sort of audience you can
imagine. It is heightened language, 95 percent is poetry. It is not naturalistic.
In Shakespeare’s time, of course no one spoke in iambic pentameter in everyday life. The
language was considered poetic and heightened even back then. So the actors have to rise
to meet the height of the language and the gigantic images. Lennox’s speech about that
terrible night of Duncan’s death and its images. Using the language to its maximum effect.
You need to attack the language with the huge high stakes that it demands. The actors are
doing ten shows a week in front of demanding audiences – much more like a Shakespearean
audience.
Is there a design for the show?
The set design is very simple for a number of reasons. I want to expose the bones of theatre
making. Shakespeare never pretended it was realistic or natural. His actors would speak
directly to the audience. So we will have a blank open space, not mask the walls of the theatre.
We will have the costumes and props on stage ready to go. They will go to the costume rack
and get it. When the actors need blood on their hands they will apply it with a bottle in view of
the audience before coming on.
A light grey slate coloured floor to transform the space and to show up all the blood. In
Melbourne we will have a 100 exposed light bulbs hanging in the space in five rows. To
integrate the lighting and the set into a surreal otherworldly environment.
Sound design?
I have a sound designer/composer, Nate Edmondson, and his music will play a big part in
the show. This will reflect the emotional undercurrent of the play. I like a present sound track
to help support the performance.
Costumes?
Contemporary, dark suits, casual clothes for the young lords, a feel of young wealthy privilege
– the young royals for instance. I was inspired by the music from LORDE ‘Royals’, but she
talks about excess and materialism – some of that will be on display to highlight the grab for
status and power. You sit there in your trappings of wealth but what did it really cost you? The
character of Malcom will be dialled up. I want to make him a privileged and entitled kind of
character who doesn’t do any of the hard work and to add fuel to Macbeth’s motivations.
What about the Theatrical Styles?
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I would describe it as abstract and surreal, it is an exposed style, open and this will be evident
in the wide sprawling space of the Playhouse and all the trappings of the theatre will be used.
The alienation from imagining we are watching a naturalistic world, breaking down the fourth
wall, direct engagement with the audience. But this all comes from the text and from
Shakespeare himself. When I watch ‘realistic’ versions of Shakespeare they feel like museum
pieces. I want this to be much more visceral and engaging as a theatre experience.
ONLINE RESOURCES MACBETH
© Bell Shakespeare 2014, unless otherwise indicated. Provided all acknowledgements are retained, this material
may be used, reproduced and communicated free of charge for non-commercial educational purposes within
Australian and overseas schools.