Macbeth (review)

Unlike the equivocal nature of just about everything in Macbeth, the weather on the night I saw the production was unambiguously foul: there was nothing fair about it. A summer monsoon that had dominated the northeast coast of the United States deluged actors and audience throughout most of the two and a half hour show. We all stuck it out to the bitter end, however, prompting a grateful Liev Schrieber (Macbeth) to acknowledge our steadfastness during the curtain call. "Thank you for staying with us. It is an evening like this one that performers always remember." What was fair unfortunately—and merely fair—was the acting, leaving doubt whether the audience's memory would last as long.

That said, a fair Macbeth is no mean accomplishment. But the success of any production rests heavily on the infamous husband and wife team. Schrieber and Jennifer Ehle raised expectations high, for they are equipped with all the necessary physical and mental attributes. They are both tall and heroically proportioned, with clear and resonant voices. (Unlike many of the other actors in this vocally challenged cast, they had no apparent need for the individualized microphones that have unfortunately become standard issue for actors everywhere.) They parsed some of Shakespeare's most complicated verse intelligently, carefully charting their descent into moral oblivion. Too carefully. There was too little horror in their recognition of the monsters they were becoming. To find that dark and fertile interior, protagonists must often take big emotional chances. They must even risk melodrama.

Figure 1.

Florencia Lozano as Lady Macbeth and Liev Schrieber as Macbeth in the Public Theater production of Macbeth. Photographer Michal Daniel.

Instead Ehle remained at a discreet intellectual remove from her character throughout the evening. Even in the sleep-walking scene she commented upon, rather than inhabited, Lady Macbeth's guilt over the earlier regicide and subsequent murders. To his credit Schrieber began plumbing the lower, darker depths of Macbeth somewhere midway through the play but, curiously, only after he had killed Duncan and secured the crown. (The pre-assassination Macbeth beset by "horrible imaginings" has always fascinated me more than the man who later develops into the blood-steeped killer whose gruesome deeds "must be acted ere they may be scanned.") Still, better later from Schrieber than never. When he confronted Banquo's ghost he seemed a savage beast, terrible in his fury and his fear. Nearly foaming at the mouth, he ended up sprawled on the dining table, hurtling bottles, glasses—anything within reach—at the imaginary specter. While this was his best moment, there were other highlights. He was marvelous during the final long scene at Dunsinane as he staggered around the stage like a punch-drunk prizefighter, where each blow—Birnam's arrival at his doorstep, his wife's death, Macduff's unlikely nativity revealed—brought him closer to the final count. The nearer he approached the end, the more desperately he fought on. At these crucial moments, we found ourselves in a state that Aristotle describes as hovering midway between pity and fear. We couldn't look on, but we daren't look away. Unfortunately, such excitement came too infrequently and, when it did, other members of the workmanlike cast were unable to supply the sympathetic contrapuntal notes: Banquo was wooden, Macduff carefully earnest, his wife unattractively shrill. So much then depended on Schrieber. In the end, he seemed to please no one thoroughly. An audience...