Real-life couple illuminate Macbeths’ intimacy in the candlelit gloaming
IT’S been an uneven first season for Michelle Terry’s artistic directorship of the Globe. Acting-wise, Terry started the year outdoors as Hamlet; now the winter season has moved inside to the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, she stars as Lady Macbeth, opposite real-life husband Paul Ready, best known as the treacherous civil servant in Bodyguard, as Macbeth. On this evidence, Terry would have done well to award herself the role of Macbeth too, as she’s easily the most vivid performer here.
It’s been a year of Scottish plays: both the National and the RSC have had a crack, with varying degrees of success; if one could combine the best elements from all three productions, it would be a version to be reckoned with. What would be selected from Robert Hastie’s still and centred reading is the pulsing sense of marital complicity and intimacy that Ready and Terry conjure in this tactile power couple.
Ready speaks the verse beautifully, but doesn’t plumb the necessary depths and extremes of behaviour. Terry is crisp and distinct from the start, reading her husband’s letter aloud with gripping intent. When Ready and Terry are not on stage together, the tempo drops precipitously; too much of the acting elsewhere is uneven. The witches, selected by the drawing of tapers among the cast each night, make no impact.
Let’s talk about candles. The Wanamaker is lit only by candlelight and, authentic and beautiful as this is, it’s very hard to see in the perpetual gloaming. This constant darkness is alienat- ing, giving the whole enterprise a muted air and, crucially, not allowing access to all-important facial expressions. A more appealing ethereal atmosphere is conjured by three singers, who use John Dee’s occult language of Enochian for their haunting numbers.
⬤ Until February 2 (020 7401 9919, shakespearesglobe.com)