Great Theatre on Screen

For many of us, our memories of great performances and extraordinary productions are infinitely precious. I can still vividly recall Sir John Gielgud using that wonderful voice to illuminate a whole range of Shakespeare’s characters for his “Ages of Man” one-man show at the Theatre Royal in 1963; or ten years earlier Anthony Quayle centre-stage at the Tivoli electrifying us (and, I have been told, terrifying his fellow actors) in Othello’s “Farewell the tranquil mind” speech. But on both these occasions I was privileged to have good seats and Gielgud and Quayle were determined to give their best at every performance. On matinee days, afraid of giving a sub-standard interpretation in the evening, Quayle only played in the afternoon. The joke around Sydney at the time was that even Anthony Quayle quailed from playing Othello twice a day.

Now less-scrupulous managers here and overseas put on alternate performers mid-week during long runs. Anthony Warlow didn’t appear the night I attended Phantom of the Opera a few years back. It was “explained” by a minuscule note inside the lavish and very expensive program listing the names of other performers who would appear as the Phantom at some performances. The replacement was terrible, and the revival a sorry apology for what had once been a fine production. We’d have all been better off at home comfortably watching the DVD of the movie.

Then there are the times you see great performances from a rubbish seat. In 1996 I was able to get in to see John Gabriel Borkman in the Olivier auditorium at the National Theatre London. The leads were Vanessa Redgrave and Paul Scofield. It was an extraordinary experience, but observed from a distance. Certainly Scofield and Redgrave projected their performances to the whole house, but many of us at the back still felt deprived.

Actors and directors dislike this as much as audiences. Lord Olivier dreamed of a theatre design where every seat was the same distance from the stage. Ironically that is far from true of the theatre that bears his name. Also, as powerful as the performances we recall may be in memory, they remain ephemeral. Theatre scholars endeavour to describe great productions of the past using prompt books, photographs and the memories of playgoers. But all they can achieve is an approximation.

In the light of this, how should we view the recent “broadcast” of Kenneth Branagh and Rob Ashford’s production of Macbeth from St Peter’s, a deconsecrated church in Manchester? In Australia of course it was a delayed broadcast (by several months) with a high-definition recording of the performance screened in art houses such as the Dendy and Cremorne Orpheum. But in Britain it was broadcast live to selected cinemas. Very few people were actually able to see this Macbeth at St Peter’s. There was only a two-week run, and the church accommodated an audience of 260. According to the introduction to the screening, all performances sold out in nine minutes.

Judging from the wide shots, the staging in the church was close to Olivier’s ideal theatre with everyone close to the performers. Spectators sat on wooden pews either side of a narrow aisle—the original nave—where most of the action took place. This “stage” was covered in mud. At one end was a raised “altar” where Lady Macbeth stood until her “entrance” reading the letter. At the other end was a wall with high openings from which characters declaimed as if from battlements. It was from there the witches first appeared.

This kind of staging is familiar to those of us who remember Richard Wherrett’s production of Richard III with John Bell—daemonic in the title role at the Nimrod Theatre in 1975—where the audience was encompassed by the action. Richard and John didn’t have rain to fall in the front rows or splash mud at the spectators but as with Branagh events, the action was coming at the spectators from all directions.

There is an intimacy in this kind of staging, but inevitably spectators can still miss key moments. The directors of the broadcast remedied this with the occasional telling close-up and some adroit shifts to different set-ups—the live broadcast equivalent of cutting. The action is also enhanced by some very cinematic top shots. Indeed viewers of the broadcast become super spectators. They could see more, and were more comfortable, than the spectators at St Peter’s.

But do those of us who view Branagh’s Macbeth on screen experience the unique intimacy of a live performance? Regrettably the answer is: not quite. It was a broadcast of the last night of the run with everyone at their best and, for viewers in cinemas in England, completely live. But for me there was a slight barrier, an emotional distance. Nevertheless, given the circumstances, we were still able to witness an extraordinary production, and it must be conceded, thanks to the camera, a privileged insight into some of the great moments of Branagh’s performance. He speaks the famous soliloquy from Act V, “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, / Creeps in this petty pace from day to day / To the last syllable of recorded time” quietly, head bowed, his back to half the audience. The camera finds him there, and as it tightens into a close shot, the viewer is able to observe Macbeth’s despair and grief at the death of Lady Macbeth (Alex Kingston) in a way that was invisible to many spectators in the house.

This “record” is often excellent cinema. Throughout the performance spectators and players are immersed in a hell of darkness, wintry rain and mud. One is reminded of Orson Welles’s 1948 film version where the characters were shrouded in shadow and Macbeth’s anguish was observed in tightly framed close shots. With a major restoration in the late 1970s this work has gained overdue recognition as a near masterpiece. However, the broadcast version of Branagh and Ashford’s production more than equals Welles’s achievement.

Branagh opens traditionally with the famous incantation by the weird sisters, here portrayed as a shrieking, grotesque parody of womanhood. When they utter, “there to meet with Macbeth”, the character appears, in all his craggy authority, at the altar. We then see Macbeth in the battle against the rebels—recreated with a spectacular series of fights up and down the aisle, all clashing broadswords, violence and mud.

As Olivier is reported to have done, Branagh’s Macbeth greets the weird sisters with a weary familiarity. The killing of the king has already been enacted in his mind. Certainly, Alex Kingston is chilling in the letter scene and very powerful as she urges her husband to “screw his courage to the sticking place”. But for all Macbeth’s hesitations and Branagh’s portrayal of the man’s anguished conscience, they commit the terrible murder of Duncan together.

An intense physical relationship is implied from the outset. When Macbeth returns from the battle, the couple withdraws into the shadows to make love. Macbeth can be seen refastening the back of his wife’s dress as they greet Duncan. These subtleties must have been invisible to some of the audience in the church, so the broadcast becomes a valuable corrective to the vagaries of live performance. I have never been so conscious in the film and stage versions I have seen of the play’s headlong rush to destruction or the extent to which Macbeth’s crime taints the realm of Scotland. It even extends to Ray Fearon’s splendid interpretation of Macduff. His abandonment of Lady Macduff to Macbeth’s savagery has rarely been so tellingly portrayed.

Scholars have demonstrated the extent to which various forms of equivocation—half-truths—dominate Macbeth. Here it is embodied superbly in Ray Oram’s design with its shadows and ambiguity enhancing the intensity of the brilliant ensemble acting. Branagh and Kingston’s verse-speaking may lack the word music of some stage Macbeths, but they have a clarity that enables audiences to experience the emotion in every word.

Clearly there are immense advantages in broadcasting great productions such as this to larger audiences than could see the play in even a long run. And of course it means that we can possess great theatrical achievements in ways that were impossible before. Although he left us some great recordings, visually there are only a few minutes captured on film of Sir John Gielgud’s Hamlet in Humphrey Jennings’s Diary for Timothy. There are only descriptions left of Sir Michael Redgrave’s Mark Antony and Olivier’s own Macbeth, both considered by contemporaries to be among the greatest performances of the parts in living memory.

With luck we should be able to capture many of the great theatrical achievements of the twenty-first century. It may even be possible to broadcast live productions in foreign languages with subtitles. Until now theatre—great theatre—has been disturbingly elitist. But with actors playing directly to audiences all over the world, theatre, like film, may become a democratic art. Moreover, there are indications that the interweaving of live performance and cinema could create new genres; but that is another article.