You know you’re in trouble at a production of Macbeth when the three witches look like they’re about to start a cooking class at a suburban shopping mall. That’s what greets audiences at the Longacre Theater in the half-hour before Sam Gold’s bizarro interpretation of the Scottish Play. This highly-touted staging starring Daniel Craig (the big screen’s most recent James Bond) and the acclaimed Irish-Ethiopian actress Ruth Negga, doesn’t seem to trust the audience to take Shakespeare straight. Like his overstuffed King Lear featuring Glenda Jackson from a few seasons back, Gold’s take on the Bard’s tale of overweening ambition and imaginary daggers, panders to the lowest common-denominator crowd and has way too much going on.
Let’s start with those crunchy-granola witches. Maria Dizzia, Phillip James Brandon, and Bobbi MacKenzie, along with two other sorcerers (Che Ayende and Eboni Flowers), form a coven of five rather than the usual three. On Christine Jones’s bare-bones set, they stand behind a kitchen cart with mixing bowls and utensils, seeming to prepare some pasta rather than a magical brew. They are costumed by Suttirat Larlarb in dowdy modern attire, resembling members of the PTA and are just about as scary.
Once the lights go down, Michael Patrick Thornton who will later play Lenox and happens to be in a wheelchair, greets the patrons like a warm-up comic before a sitcom (“How we doin’ tonight?”). Then he tells a few jokes about how it’s supposed to be unlucky to mention the play’s name and elicits mild laughter. It’s almost as if director Gold is afraid to let this classic work just unspool by itself. He has to gimmick it up. He seems to be saying, “A 2022 Broadway audience can’t comprehend the Bard. I have to make them comfortable first with friendly witches, a few jokes, and a little comic schtick first.”
The dumbing-down continues with the entrance of Duncan, the king whom Macbeth murders to gain his crown. Played with clownish pomposity by Paul Lazar, he sports fat padding which you just know is loaded with fake blood sacs to spurt all over the stage when the Thane stabs him. After the murder, Lazar strips off his padding and transforms into the low-comedy Porter, all while dropping character, talking to the audience (“This is the weird part of the show” he says) and taking us completely out of the play.
You’ll notice I haven’t mentioned either of the leads until deep into the review. That’s because Gold smothers Craig and Negga as well as Shakespeare’s theme of boundless lust for power with all this distracting business. The tricks also include having the ensemble walk around with fog machines to create a spooky atmosphere. When they play demons or ghosts, the fog producers are tucked under rain ponchos, so it looks like they are exuding supernatural mist.
Fortunately, once the Macbeths have risen to the throne, Gold settles down and lets the plot gather force and momentum without the silly side stuff. After intermission, Craig’s muscular performance emerges, and we see the character’s struggle between his conscience and the corruption of absolute power. Likewise, Negga’s ruthless interpretation of Lady Macbeth becomes clearer, and her guilt-wracked sleepwalking scene is appropriately haunting. The battle sequences and the final confrontation with Macduff (a masterful Grantham Coleman) have real danger and strength (David S. Leong is credited as “Violence Director”). Also on the plus side, Maria Dizzia delivers truthful limning as Lady Macduff, the Doctor and one of the Witches and Amber Gray is convincing as a female Banquo.
But Gold has split the play in half. The opening is an unsuccessful attempt at a Macbeth-Lite and the latter portion is a serious staging, but it’s too late. He’s introduced too many unnecessary concepts and incomprehensible bits for his version to be an integrated whole.
