Macbeth (NTS/Alan Cumming)

MACBETH

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on MACBETH at the Tramway, Glasgow, for The Scotsman 16.6.12
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4 stars ****

FOR ALL its blood and horror, and its dark dealings with the supernatural, Shakespeare’s Macbeth is often a tragedy that lacks a real sense of human sorrow. Its hero begins as a warrior, and ends as a monstrous tyrant; and often, only his victims truly touch the heart.

There’s no chance of failing to feel overwhelmed by pity and sorrow, though, in the course of Alan Cumming’s astonishing 100-minute performance of Macbeth, which won a standing ovation at its premiere performance in the Tramway last night. Set by directors John Tiffany and Andrew Goldberg in the bleak spaces of a psychiatric isolation unit, this Macbeth is performed by Cumming as a monologue, with occasional beautifully-pitched interventions from Myra McFadyen and Ali Craig as two medical attendants. The shifting of this mediaeval story of war and rebellion into the antiseptic spaces of a 20th century asylum – all towering walls of bleached turquoise tiles, surveillance cameras and flickering screens – is undoubtedly disorientating; there’s no sense of explanation here, and no systematic attempt to link the imagery of Macbeth’s story to this new location.

Yet from the first moment of the show, when we see Cumming’s small, vulnerable figure being gently stripped of his street clothes, we catch the sense that this is a study of almost intolerable human suffering; of a “mind diseased”, haunted by images or memories of terrible violence, and constantly fragmenting into different voices and perspectives, as Cumming plays witches and lords, the old King, Macbeth himself, and his lady. The action is punctuated by the surging, passionate music of Max Richter, full of sorrow and compassion; and often, this Macbeth seems locked in a dialogue with different versions or images of himself, captured on the big screens that dominate Merle Hensel’s memorable set.

There are moments when the intensity of Cumming’s interaction with the text seems to flag a little, and the huge stage looks briefly like an arena too large for a single solo performer, however gifted. For most of the show’s length, though, Cumming’s grasp of the poetry is so complete, and his raw emotional immersion in it so total, that the audience remains absolutely gripped by the narrative; and unable to resist the sense of being pulled by the story towards the very brink of hell – but a hell redefined for our individualistic age as a place of infinite loneliness and sorrow, where inner demons dog and destroy us, and will not be defeated.

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