Macbeth

Abstract

Reviewed by: Macbeth Gemma Miller MacbethPresented by the Ninagawa Company at the Barbican Theatre, London, England, in association with Thelma Holt Ltd, Saitama Arts Foundation, and HoriPro Inc. 10 5–8, 2017. Directed by Yukio Ninagawa. Set by Kappa Senoh. Lighting by Sumio Yoshii. Costume by Jusaburo Tsujimura. Sound by Katsuji Takahashi. Wigs by Nihiro Fukamachi. Choreography by Juraku Hanayagi. Fight choreography by Masahiro Kunii and Naoki Kurihara. With Masachika Ichimura (Macbeth), Yuko Tanaka (Lady Macbeth), Kazunaga Tsuji (Banquo), Keita Oishi (Macduff), Tetsuro Sagawa (King Duncan), Kenichi Ishii (Porter), Kyoko Nakamura (Witch 1), Tatsumi Aoyama (Old Man/Siward), Hayata Tateyama (Malcolm), Eiichi Seike (Witch 3), Hiroyuki Mamiya (Ross), Hideaki Tezuka (Angus), Kunihiro Iida (Doctor), Yamato Kamiyama (Witch 2), and others. The first time I saw Macbethby the Ninagawa Company was on an old VHS recorder in the performance archives at Shakespeare's Globe. In spite of the grainy images and almost unintelligible soundtrack, I was completely transfixed. It was the first time I had seen such an arresting display of aesthetic beauty and dramatic intensity, combining the visual sensations of Victorian stage spectacle with the stylized beauty of kabukitheatre. Ninagawa's Macbethpremiered in Japan in 1980 and first came to the United Kingdom in 1985 when it was staged at the Edinburgh Festival alongside Euripides's Medea. Theatre impresario Thelma Holt was in the audience for this seminal performance and, struck by Ninagawa's "visual imagination," immediately scheduled a meeting with his producer, Tadao Nakane. They arranged for the two productions to be staged at the National Theatre for "International 87" and Thelma Holt Ltd has since been responsible for bringing numerous Ninagawa productions to the United Kingdom, including A Midsummer Night's Dreamin 1996, Periclesin 2003, Titus Andronicusin 2006 and no fewer than three productions of Hamlet, in 1998, 2004 and 2015. This particular Macbethwas a revival of the original 1980 production, staged to commemorate the life and work of Ninagawa who passed away in May 2016 at the age of eighty. Using the same creative team, it re-created the stunning stage visuals that had impressed Holt in Edinburgh and cemented Ninagawa's legacy as an international, innovative, and enduring talent. The play was transposed to sixteenth-century feudal Japan, drawing on obvious parallels with the political situation of eleventh-century Scotland, the setting for Shakespeare's Macbeth. Both [End Page 160]countries had networks of landowning lords ( daimyoin Japan and thanes in Scotland) who pledged military and political allegiance to the overall ruler in exchange for property and power. The position of the regent (known as a shogunin Japan) was notoriously precarious, with regular attempts at usurpation by rebellious subjects. Although Japan did not face any serious threat from foreign invaders at this point, civil unrest was a common occurrence, as peasants regularly rose against their landlords and samuraiagainst their overlords. Until Tokugawa Ieyasu came to power and established the Tokugawa shogunate in 1603, ushering in a prosperous and peaceful era known as the Edoperiod, Japan was plagued by civil war. Setting the play in this era not only resonated with the unstable political situation of eleventh-century Scotland but also evoked the bloody and destructive War of the Roses, a period of history that still haunted Jacobean England when Macbethwas first staged. Over-weening ambition, an all-pervading sense of suspicion and distrust and an honor code that was more honored in the breach than the observance, the themes of Macbethseemed, in the handling of Ninagawa and his team, a natural fit for its feudal samuraisetting. Ninagawa's Macbeth, however, was much more than a wholesale transposition of Shakespeare's play to a feudal Japanese context. It was an intercultural hybrid that combined stylized kabukitheatre practices with psychological realism and drew upon traditional Japanese imagery underscored by European classical music. The dominant musical refrains were from Faure's "Requiem" and Barber's "Adagio for Strings," works full of pathos and passion, and the soaring voice of a boy soprano was heard singing "Pie Jesu" in Macbeth's dying moments. Following the dazzling swordsmanship of Macbeth and Macduff's final stand...