Do3: Sun 30 April: Macbeth

[french frank]

Billed as a 'new production' and a Repeat on the week's schedule page, there is an unusual paucity of detail about it either way.

A new production of Shakespeare's thrilling tragedy starring Neil Dudgeon and Emma Fielding
'Your face, my thane, is as a book where men / May read strange matters...'
Sound design by Colin Guthrie.

2 hours

[Clicking on the + sign doesn't seem to be a new version of 'See more', as it just turns into a √, so I don't know what I've plussed myself into.]

A slide show of the leading characters.

More details in Radio Times. The reviewer said she listened while reading the text in order to be able to distinguish the characters, which I usually do. The text seems generally to be reduced by adroitly shortening some of the speeches rather than cutting whole scenes, but the eye usually catches up quite promptly. The mediacentre doesn't mention it at all in Radio 3's Programme Information for Sunday, which usually is because it's a repeat. Can anyone remember hearing this production before? I can't.

(Of course, if you know the text as well as Stanley Stewart, you won't need to read the text anyway! )

[aeolium]

It looks like a repeat of this production:

https://bbashakespeare.warwick.ac.uk/productions/macbeth-2015-bbc-bbc-radio-3

Although I very much welcome a Shakespeare season on Do3, it's a slight regret that it is the most frequently performed plays (and the plays fairly recently performed either on BBC radio or TV) that are featuring. Even Pericles had a previous Do3 production in 2005, repeated in 2008. It would be good to hear some that rarely get a broadcast, like Coriolanus or Timon of Athens, or Troilus and Cressida.

I'm pretty sure I heard this production but it does not stand out in the memory.

[DracoM]

Beat me to it............yes, a repeat.

[french frank]

It looks like a repeat of this production:

https://bbashakespeare.warwick.ac.uk...bc-bbc-radio-3

Thank you for tracking that down - I sought but I did not find. They must have copied and pasted 'A new production' from last time, when it was.

I quite agree about the choice of plays. Repeats are to be expected, but it would be good if 'new productions' were more enterprising. I'd be curious to hear King John, and I don't know The Comedy of Errors.

[Stanley Stewart]

"Of course, if you know the text as well as Stanley Stewart, you won't need to read the text, anyway! )"


I made a real hash of the Scottish laird at, fortunately, the Little Theatre at RADA, not the Vanbrugh upstairs. Couldn't find a comfort zone in the darkness of the play. Infirm of purpose!

In earlier years, I saw a sound performance from Maurice Denham at the Old Vic but a major actor, Paul Scofield, also struggled at the RSC. Peter O'Toole, early 80s, was disastrous at The Old Vic, although the theatre was packed at every performance. By the time I saw it, he was sending himself up! Patrick Stewart later scored well at Chichester Festival Theatre but Ian McKellen and Judi Dench were both dynamic at The Young Vic, 1979, and I still view my off-air recording with great satisfaction.

I also have an off-air DVD of the Scottish play, 1948, made on a low budget at RKO on sets previously used for the Buck Rogers serials, directed by and starring Orson Welles. He has an immense screen presence and a low vocal range which goes straight to the heart of the character. Mesmerising.

[french frank]

It looks like a repeat of this production:

https://bbashakespeare.warwick.ac.uk...bc-bbc-radio-3I'm pretty sure I heard this production but it does not stand out in the memory.

My overriding thought was the (deliberate?) omission of anything approaching a Scottish (or even cod Scottish) accent! Tended to be more all-purpose 'rugged'.

I was left wondering why this play is up among the most well-known. Apart from some of the happy coinings ('milk of human kindness' &c), it seemed unrelieved violence and little subtlety. The play or the production? I hadn't studied the play since school and I'm not sure that I've ever seen it performed. Macbeth seemed to fluctuate too easily between wimp and degenerate - I didn't feel Lady M conveyed enough to hold these two sides of her husband together.

[DracoM]

Ref acting: given that numbers of the critical characters are either [a] Scottish or [b] Northumbrian, and given that [c] the BBC has access to all manner of actors with regional accents, why they do not then [d] cast regionals as appropriate, I do not know.

Found this all just a tad samey - as FF says 'rugged'. It is a play I know well, but......

[jean]

Radio Times told us it was the 2015 production.

What I find strange is that the website information includes the Garbarek/Hilliard Tallis as though it were part of the production...which is wasn't!

[french frank]

Radio Times told us it was the 2015 production.

What I find strange is that the website information includes the Garbarek/Hilliard Tallis as though it were part of the production...which is wasn't!

I didn't listen first time round but my enthusiasm for Richard II did spur me into listening to it.

No, Garbarek not part of it. There was very little music - just alternations between the drumbeats and the 'knocking'. It's always good to have an opportunity to hear these things (I was impressed at how little they cut - must be a relatively short play?). Overall, though, I wasn't gripped as I was with Richard II.

(Sudden thought: MacB came over slightly as a cross between the ineffectual Richard II and the blackhearted Richard III - probably fanciful and wouldn't be supported by a second listening )

[aeolium]

I was left wondering why this play is up among the most well-known. Apart from some of the happy coinings ('milk of human kindness' &c), it seemed unrelieved violence and little subtlety. The play or the production? I hadn't studied the play since school and I'm not sure that I've ever seen it performed. Macbeth seemed to fluctuate too easily between wimp and degenerate - I didn't feel Lady M conveyed enough to hold these two sides of her husband together.

For me it's the quality of the verse, especially in Macbeth's speeches, and also the fairly unusual portrait of an ambitious yet introspective, pathologically violent tyrant in a Western European country (as opposed to Marlowe's Tamburlaine), written in a country where the ruler has written a treatise on the divine right of kings, and one on witchcraft. And after all, James VI of Scotland only came to rule as a result of the forced abdication and subsequent execution of his mother; and Macbeth, like James, believes in witches and his supernatural right to rule (vulnerable to "no man who's born of women"). I haven't heard this production this time round but I'd like to hear a Macbeth who is a more reflective, almost intellectual, character than the bloodthirsty thug he is often portrayed as - i.e. an early C17 character rather than a C11 one.

[french frank]

It would be very interesting to hear your view if you do get round to listening, aeolium. It certainly wasn't boring - though following the text does tend to keep the mind focused anyway. But I didn't get a very strong idea of an 'intellectual'.

I take your point about the unusualness of a Western ruler being depicted in this way (but it was Scotland! ).

[Norrette]

Haven't listened to it yet, despite having recorded it the first time round. I came in to talk proms but just wanted to say how good the R3 drama is these days - quite filling up my Humax box.

I need to hurry on and convert my recordings to mp3 for purposes of listening on the phone.