Robert Hurwitt selects his favorite “Macbeth” productions
See any great production of a classic, and it sets certain standards by which you’ll measure all others. See many very good to great productions, and you’ll amass a varied collection of such benchmarks. So it is with Shakespeare’s “Macbeth,” in which Frances McDormand and Conleth Hill star in a production directed by Daniel Sullivan that begins previews Friday, Feb. 19, at Berkeley Rep.
What follows is my personal top 10 productions of the Scottish play, culled from the three dozen or so stage versions I’ve seen. with a few films thrown in just because they’re unforgettable, including an honorable mention. Sorry, neither “MacBird” nor “MacHomer” made the list. But neither did “Ubu Roi.”
Macbeth: Stratford (Ontario) Festival, 1962. Intense, earthy, fiercely intelligent performances by Christopher Plummer and Kate Reid as the Macbeths in the exciting onrush of director Peter Coe’s swift, somewhat strippeddown version. The first “Macbeth” to make an indelible impression on me.
Macbeth: Berkeley Shakespeare Festival, 1983. Richard E.T. White’s nightmare-inducing, small-cast, punk-Expressionist version proved provocative and profoundly moving — a dagger of a tragedy, as visible and palpable as the one Macbeth envisions. Julian López-Morillas and Lura Dolas anchored the show in the leads, and an insidiously chilling Howard Swain was electrifying as everyone from the First Witch to an unforgettably sinister drunken Porter.
Umabatha: The Zulu Macbeth: Johannesburg Civic Theatre, Cal Performances, 1997. A drum-driven rush of robust energy, Welcome Msomi’s landmark 1969 Zulu version hit the stage in a burst of dance and spectacle. Thabani Patrick Tshanini was a potent Mabatha (Macbeth) and the formidable Dieketseng Mnisi, ruling the stage as his wife, invested the sleepwalking scene with uncommon horrific pathos.
Macbeth: Old Globe, San Diego, 1983. Director Jack O’Brien’s rigorously ascetic “I-Ching” production — a nine-actor chamber version, staged in the round — highlighted the underlying horror by infusing it with a throw-of-the-coin happenstance. An electrifying Anthony Zerbe (Malcolm in the ’62 Stratford “Macbeth”) and Andra Akers rose to an almost operatic intensity in the climactic scenes.
Macbeth: Shakespeare Santa Cruz, 1992: One of the late Mark Rucker’s most imaginative and finely crafted productions incorporated the festival’s redwood grove set-
ting into the action, with lights turning the stately trunks into castle portals and projecting images onto fog in the woods. James Carpenter’s Macbeth seemed to grow in magnitude as his character deteriorated, underscored by Kate Skinner’s Lady Macbeth’s growing awareness of the horrors she’d set in motion.
The Kingdom of Desire:
Contemporary Legend Theatre (Taiwan), at San Jose’s California Theatre, 2005. Shakespeare’s bloody tragedy was translated into high-velocity Peking opera by director Wu Hsing-Kuo, who also played, sang and danced — with stunning acrobatic skill — the title role. Dynamism of performance replaced much of the substance of the original in Lee Huei-Ming’s text, but a charismatic Wei Hai-Min delivered as cunning, committed and unsettling a Lady Macbeth as any I’ve seen.
Throne of Blood: Perhaps the greatest Shakespeare film ever made, Akira Kurosawa’s 1957 classic soars on Toshiro Mifune’s monumental performance and its grand cinematography. The scene in which Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane dramatizes the impact of the Witches’ betrayal better than any stage version. And the film has had a lasting impact on theatrical productions ever since.
Macbeth: California Shakespeare Theater, 2010: A fierce bond between Jud Williford and Stacy Ross, as the fabled title couple, and her viscerally fearful sense of his disintegration, played off and reinforced the unsettling impact of director Joel Sass’ use of modern warfare, medical and interrogation techniques in a bracing, original and grisly version for a war-weary contemporary audience.
Macbeth: Pacific Conservatory of the Performing Arts, Santa Maria, 1983. Director Allen Fletcher took an unusually lush, symphonic approach, with costumes and demons out of Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights,” to evoke a remarkably immediate medieval allegory of the struggle for a soul, highlighted by Daniel Davis’ fearsome disintegration in the title role.
Macbeth: Recoiling from the horror of the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, Roman Polanski made one of the most intense, bleak, grisly and intellectually resonant Shakespeare films ever, fueled by the strong performances of Jon Finch and Francesca Annis and presumably aided by the insights of co-writer Kenneth Tynan.
Macbeth: Yes, it has all kinds of flaws, but there’s no ignoring the sheer magnificence of Orson Welles’ 1948 movie (in its restored version), for the scope of his vision, the originality of his interpretation and the impressive depth of his performance.