The Lowland hall at Ingliston, a vast hangar-like space, was transformed into a contemporary theatre for the Polish production of Macbeth at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival. Conjuring the atmosphere of bombed out buildings, a bunker, a ruined castle, it was an ideal setting for a performance that referenced horror film and video games.
The play was transposed to Iraq during the American Occupation. Duncan as King of Scotland was commander in chief, Macbeth one of his generals. It starts abruptly with a powerful scene of command control; computer screens flicker with multiple imagery as Duncan and his men are orchestrating a battle. The noise of helicopters grows louder. Macbeth presumed to be in one of the helicopters has been told to retreat, he disobeys, lands, and then kills the men praying there who are presumed to be terrorists or insurgents. Macbeth does not shoot the one man left alive but brutally kills him with a knife foreshadowing the killing of Duncan and the many other murders in the play.
The witches’ prophecies were spoken by a Muslim woman wearing long black clothes and a hijab. Lady Macbeth comes on stage in a tight red skirt and black jumper as if she might have come home from the office. Later at the banquet she wore a kimono and played the torments of her conscience in a sort of trance with movement suggestive of sleepwalking. The ‘doctor’ who talks to Macbeth at the end of the play about Lady Macbeth’s sleepwalking was played by a tall woman with short blonde hair who looked straight out of a science fiction film. As they talked, the sound of the witches laughing and screeching echoed around the set. Another scene of drunken, debauched soldiers recalled the abuses of Abu Ghraib.
The transposition of Macbeth to Iraq worked well for a play about the corroding effects of the psychological, sexual, and political aspects of pursuing ambition by evil means. At times the scale of the set dwarfed the actors. Another consequence of the huge set, and use of effectively five stages simultaneously, was that you couldn’t see what was going on in all the stages. Depending on where you were in the audience you saw a different part of the play. So I missed completely the ending of Lady Macbeth — apparently in a washing machine! Despite this, the scale and visual imagery made it a hugely memorable performance of Macbeth.
- © British Journal of General Practice 2012