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A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
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Kitchen W8
Too long and drawn out but very entertaining with excellent special effects
This is a peculiar play and does not work for me. Some of it is very funny but there are real flaws
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London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Rupert Goold.
Cast: Scott Handy, Ben Carpenter, Martin Turner, Miahcel Feast, Mark Rawlings, Patrick Stewart, Kate Fleetwood, Paul Shelley, Tim Treloar, Bill Nash, Christopher Knott, Christopher Nolan, Hywel John, Suzanne Burden, Polly Frame, Niamh McGrady, Sophie Hunter
Description: Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood star as the king and his ambitious wife, in the Chichester Festival Production of Shakespeare's tragedy. Directed by Rupert Goold.
Trains: Tube: Piccadilly Circus 
Phone: 0870950 0915
Website: www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk
Kitchen sink drama: The staging is claustrophobic as Kate Fleetwood and Patrick Stewart capture the fragile balance of power between Lady Macbeth and Macbeth at the Gielgud
Witch switch: 'Nurses' Laura Rees, Polly Frame and Niamh O'Grady with Stewart
Triumph: Fleetwood and her husband Rupert Goold, director of the production
Rupert Goold's Macbeth of a lifetime is almost permanently set in the vicinity of a kitchen sink and a refrigerator. It manages, though, freshly to convey the elemental sense of surprise, shock and supernatural horror that must have attended the tragedy's early 17th century performances and has long since been lost.
Transferred from Chichester's Minerva studio, where critics and audiences were enraptured, Goold's production maintains its mesmerising power on the Gielgud's larger, conventional, proscenium space. The key to the production is its setting within a Forties Stalinist tyranny, fortified by the grainy newsreel of marching soldiers, and its expressionistic staging in a claustrophobic, white-tiled basement.
This is a hell's kitchen to which the only entrance is an industrial lift that clanks up and down, bearing its human and ghostly cargo. An atmosphere of existential strangeness develops in this murky limbo which is at once field hospital, castle-dwelling and metaphysical prison.
Macbeth's witches, its apparitions and that ghost of Banquo, all seem to belong to a vanished world. Goold's triumph is to reconceive them all in modern terms. Disguised as three young nurses attending the Bloody Sergeant, the witches remove their head dresses after his death and reveal their true identities. They ironically haunt the action in their nursing mufti as domestic servants, goading and driving Patrick Stewart's riven Macbeth, conjuring up visions of the future with the help of corpses that writhe into life and words, despite being sealed in body bags.
The horror of the ghost at the feast (Martin Turner's suspicion-laden Banquo) is thrillingly suggested by playing the scene twice over - first from Macbeth's perspective and then repeated: the blooded Banquo now invisible, makes both the audience and the banquet guests feel vividly startled by their host's apparent horror at the sight of empty space.
The violence that permeates Macbeth is rendered with chilling Stalinist absolutism. Banquo is assassinated on a packed train by injection and silent gun; Lady Macduff and her children so butchered that the scene blacks out as the violence begins; the bespectacled Ross tortured in an underground chamber.
Patrick Stewart's Macbeth, the instigator of these atrocities, catches both the man's fanaticism and his vacillating anguish. I have not seen a production of the play which makes you so aware of the precarious balance of power that exists between the couple or the way in which domestic, metaphysical and murderous concerns jostle for attention.
Stewart reminds you how enthralled and appalled by visions Macbeth is, whether by witches, ghosts, daggers or hands. His eyes widen, his voice shakes. He may look the confident, older military hero, but what childlike fear lurks just beneath the surface. As if hypnotised by the hectoring voluptuousness and mocking vehemence of Kate Fleetwood's steely, self-sacrificial Lady Macbeth he embarks upon murder with reluctance. Both actors thrillingly register the fragility of their nerves as the bloody deed is done and they rinse trembling, bloody hands in the kitchen sink.
Stewart, whose fine performance has deepened and darkened since the Chichester premiere, now powerfully registers Macbeth's broody, fearful shifts of mind and his long decline into a disconsolate amorality which leaves Michael Feast's Macduff struck dumb with grief. Fleetwood, whose brief thumb-sucking gestures seem fatuous, psychologically motivated gestures, slips balefully into the loneliness of sleep-walking and hallucinations. This historic production enjoys a perfect thrill-factor.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
As a surprise, I was taken to see Macbeth by my husband. This play was best interpreted by Orson Welles, actually made better than the 1606 version Shakespeare slaved over for 15 minutes. Don't get me wrong, I love Shakespeare's works, but the subpar speeches punctuated by great lines, in this play, can go only so far. The witches were the ironic delight in Macbeth which made the play tolerable to read. But this rendition, not only was the translocation of time inappropriate, but the witches were nurses, removing the supernatural element. Patrick Stewart is a phenomenal actor, but his brilliance was dulled by the terrible adaptation and the fact that he was performing on a different level than the others, mellower, almost. I guess wanting to shock the audience, at intervals there were sudden loud bangs. They also flashed marching soldiers and white static along the walls of the set, reminiscent of that hideous play, Lestat (the book is phenomenal). There was fervor in Lady Macbeth's performance, and there was a bit of comedy that Shakespeare possibly never intended (thus awful adaptation), but those things still could not make me sit still nor capture my interest. In Aristophane's, The Frogs, Dionysos wants to go to the Underworld to bring back the great playwrights since theater was becoming sub-basement. I should ask him to bring back Orson Welles. Or better yet, producers should just stop pretending they are artists.
- Christine S., White Haven, PA
I recently saw this production in Brooklyn and was deeply moved. I thought it utterly brilliant top to bottom! I agree with the comments about the effectiveness of the modernization - of which I was initially skeptical. The shock value was renewed and the performances were quite impressive... especially that of Patrick Stewart. For me his positive and giving spirit as an artist shone through even in this towering and totally convincing performance. I plan to see this production again on Broadway!
- Christopher Kaufman, Brooklyn, NY
I went to see this production on a school trip as part of my A-level Theatre Studies. I went thinking I would be extremely bored and unsatisfied when I left. How wrong I was. It had me enticed in the action the moment it started. The production managed to relate to the modern audience and I was able to see 'Macbeth' in a whole new way and the shock-factor which would have been present when performed in Shakesperean times was present which is something I never thought could be achieved again. A big wow from me. Loved it.
- Anna Mortell, Uppingham, Rutland
I went to see the Scottish Play last night. The play was incredible, it kept both myself and my "who's Shakespeare?" husband on the edge of our seats, totally transfixed. If you want actors mincing around in tights you will be disappointed but this play was dark, brooding, violent and scary. Patrick Stewart was ageless (evil is) and brilliant as Macbeth and Kate Fleetwood as the chillingly insane Lady Macbeth gave my rugby-playing husband nightmares. I do agree with the Macduff/Malcolm comment above as I too thought the scene laboured and needing more substance. However, that aside this was a mind-blowing version of the play and I feel honoured to have been part of the experience.
- Susan Linton, London, UK
I bought my tickets almost four months ago- so looking forard to this production and was so disappointed with the whole concept- I really wanted to love it but it just didn't happen. A waste of an evening, a feeling of the emperor's new clothes about this one- just because a couple of peole rate it as five star, doesn't mean it is when Joe public pay their hard earned money to see this- a really disapointment. I normally enjoy Patrick Stewart and have been a supporter of his West End work for many years but he was mis-cast in this production.
- Carol Philbin, North London
The performance was paradoxical. It was watchable, in places compelling and the staging did bring new ideas and emphases. However I found it strangely unsatisfying - nouvelle cuisine - it was all there, it looked very pretty, but it wasn't enough. At times, especially at the beginning, the dialogue between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth was would have been more appropriate for Jerry and Margot. As for Macbeth's capering at the banquet ... Banquo was light relief by comparison, gashes and all.
- Leslie Forsyth, Berwickshire, Scotland
I went to see this last night, and it was incredible. The acting was universally superb, the direction inspired, and every other facet of the production spell-binding (no pun intended).
A couple of the scenes (e.g. the long dialogue between Macduff and Malcolm) were a little longer than needed and more difficult to understand as a result. Aside from this, the acting was easily strong enough to make the Shakespearean understandable to even the most uneducated (e.g. my American guests) audience.
Both Patrick Stewart and the production as a whole deserve many awards. Truly one of the most amazing and inspiring performances I have ever seen - I had to remind myself to pick my jaw up off the floor on several occasions.
- Liz, London
The biggest load of self-indulgent twaddle I've been put through for a long time. Don't bother. Getting through the first half was agonising enough. Sitting through the entire production; I should think akin to self inflicted torture. Patrick and Rupert must be good friends, with a lot of gushing buddies that have helped this play into the West End. It really was quite awful.
- Ms, London
The Macbeth of a lifetime? Oh come off it! Wake up you all you provincial, thespy Hollywood-star-loving brown-nosers, you just don't get out enough! And when you do, the bright lights dazzle your little saucery blinking eyes!Patrick Stewart's Macbeth is mannered, stagey and quite literally unbelievable. The eponymous Thane is, or should be, a schizoid poet/murderer who transfixes us with his (and by implication our) capacity to go suddenly disastrously off-track at any given moment in life, with the worst consequences imaginable. The challenge of portraying this is just way beyond ex-RSC Hollywood actor Stewart. He displays all the angst of a bank manager in a mid-life crisis. He's too old, for a start and - despite his self-consciously compensatory S and M leather outfit - his persona is just too cosy, too carpet-slippered and, dare I say it, too bald. Don't believe the hype and save your money: this show's a never-should've been. In fact, it never would've been were it not for the dear old things down in dormitory Chichester. The best thing one can say about Stewart's Macbeth is that he struts and frets his (overlong) hour upon the stage and then is gone!
- James Murphy, Petersfield, Hampshire
This was the worst production I have ever seen. I went to see this with such high hopes, but had to leave before the end. I could not watch a minute longer. Not one member of the cast gave a decent performance. The set and the use of video projection were just annoying. Please do not waste your money on this poor excuse for Shakespeare.
- Richard Gill, London, England
Saw this production at the Gielgud last night. It is outstanding and manages to make Macbeth yet again the Shakespeare play with the widest resonance for those of us who grew up in a twentieth century filled with horrors. The alienating staging and the beautifully observed descent into hell by Patrick Stewart is positively scary. Macbeth begins his voyage to damnation reluctant and unwilling, uncertain of his ability to do the deed. But, as Shakespeare's text makes only too clear, by the end of the play he has gone beyond the human family. Never have the cold words, "Thou wast born of woman." rung out so chillingly as by Patrick Stewart. And the pause before his final word, "...enough" was daring but worked perfectly as Macbeth surrendered his soul to the witches who had controlled his life and path to death.
See this play.
- John Wilson, London, UK
I saw this production in Chichester in August and have been thinking about it ever since. I cannot get it out of my mind.
It fully realises all the themes in the play - time, children, nature and the natural order, as no other production I've seen has done. The production is a perfect conjunction of acting, directorial vision and authority, lighting and scenic design which all serve the play to reveal the many layers of meaning in the text. The result is thrilling in a way that only live theatre at its best can be.
I have been waiting to see what the reviews in London said. One can only hope that this production will somehow find its way to New York and beyond: it deserves a very wide audience indeed.
I should mention that the friends I went with in August are not particularly fond of or interested in Shakespeare. They left the theatre with new eyes.
Patrick Stewart in particular should be recognised at long last as one of the best interpreters of Shakespeare's characters in his time.
- Terry, New York, NY
It is very good.
- Izabela, Manchester
When asked by a friend last minute if I would like to see Macbeth a day before the night's performance I was ecstatic. I have always enjoyed Shakespearean plays and spent many an hour in theatres in London and Regents Park enjoying the talents of one of England's most famous writers. I knew this play well but had no idea just how contemporary and deeply political it could have been portrayed as last night's performance. It holds no punches about obsession of power, political uprisings and an insight into how tyrants become the monsters they are; they do not get there alone. It was disturbing and dark, powerful and violent. If you want to sit easy in your seat don't see this play, but miss it at your peril!
- Deborah Newton, London
