Macbeth: Who Is That Bloodied Man?

Best described as a masterpiece of Shakespearean physical theatre, Macbeth: Who Is This Bloodied Man? is a heavily trimmed down version of the original. Medieval Scotland is re-imagined as the USSR at the brink of its fall. There the crown is made from bullets—literally—but guns, alone, are not the instruments of power. Instead of staging a ‘straight’ translation of the text, Szkotak entices his audience with stunning visual imagery, almost void of the bard’s poetic language. Scenes are reshuffled, whilst some key phrases are spoken to facilitate the audience’s understanding of the plot.

Szkotak’s starting point, it seems, is the power struggle within a decaying kingdom. Political instability breeds fear as Duncan gnaws on his throne and shoots all the messengers who bring bad news, only to be relieved by the sight of a naked traitor in a cage. There is no report of Macbeth’s prowess. It soon becomes clear that the supernatural is the ultimate agent of change. The witches in the guise of nuns and with extended wooden legs glide into the performance space lighting the torches and preparing a welcoming ritual for Macbeth and Banquo. The witches’ prophesies are not only re-enacted as grotesque fantasies; they hover between the real and the un-real. For instance, there’s a scene in which kings line up and tower over Banquo, followed by a boy rolling a king’s crown on the ground. The images merge when the boy later appears as Banquo’s son.

Recurrent images, such as the bullet crown, the boy, the guns, the logs, and the extended wooden legs, become symbolic of Macbeth’s mental state of captivity. The themes of fatalism, entrapment, claustrophobic violence and psychological trauma, are very well played out especially toward the end. Seeking prophesies from the witches, Macbeth is cornered and crushed by a gigantic steel wheel filled with severed heads. Soon after, encroached and overpowered by ‘Birnam Wood’, Macbeth is startled back into the blazing castle where he is burnt to ashes on his throne.

Szkotak’s tactics, made possible by the intimate ambiance of Square2, the National Theatre’s temporary outdoor venue on the Southbank, are to shock and petrify his audience by graphic violence accentuated by sound and manipulation of light. Be it Banquo being hammered to death by burning torches or Lady Macbeth hanging herself, the excruciating horror is within the audience’s reach, as if one could jump in and put an end to it. With Shakespeare’s text replaced by non-verbal, raw and gory action, the adaptation stops one from sympathising with the hero. Szkotak’s Macbeth is no longer a tragedy but a story of an ambitious murderer who is met with a deserving end.