These cinema productions of stage shows tend to spoil you for live performances: you become accustomed to seeing closeups and hearing every little whisper. It’s a bit like when you go to the MCG and realize that the players you’ve been seeing up close on television actually look like little ants on the field when you’re there, live.
The audience in the cinema version are all wearing headphones, and I assumed that it was because it was being filmed and that perhaps they were being short-changed by the filming process. But no- according to this video, the sound design is an integral part of the production, and theatre-goers at the Harold Pinter Theatre were all provided with headphones for a surround-sound experience, where whispers could be heard, and the sound could shift from one ear to the other, behind you. As a cinema audience, we didn’t have headphones, but the sound was so clear that at one stage, with the witches, I thought that someone was laughing very rudely and inappropriately in the cinema. It must have been part of the soundscape.
The set design is minimal: just a white square, a bit like a boxing ring, with glass cubes behind it, where you could glimpse the musicians at times, or action occurring ‘off-stage’ so to speak. The costumes, too, were rather drab in grey, except for the Macbeth’s, whose clothing changed.
It’s not a large cast, and I found myself getting a bit confused when a character would be killed off (there’s lots of killing in Macbeth) only to be resurrected as another character. This was particularly the case with King Duncan, who was offed fairly early on, only to reappear looking exactly the same, and with the same voice and delivery, in the guise of the doctor as Lady Macbeth fell apart.
Cush Jumbo did not seem particularly regal as such. Instead, she seemed like one part of a power-couple (which of course she was). And David Tennant – ah, David Tennant (sigh)- he was absolutely brilliant, on stage nearly the whole time, and just as intense and tortured as you would expect him to be.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 