suddenly turned all the lights out, including the exit signs, so there was total blackout, we discovered that people have a very primal attitude to darkness. I once did Peter Shaffer’s
Black Comedy
at the Donmar. The play opens with the very interesting convention that the lights don’t go on and you hear the characters talking as if they’re in full light, and then suddenly all the lights go on and the characters continue the rest of the play as if they are in total darkness. At the first preview I made sure there was a total blackout and stood at the back of the auditorium to make sure that nobody came in and broke it. Within a minute or two a lady scuttled up the aisle and banged into me, trying to get out because she couldn’t tolerate the darkness. I thought if that can happen in a sixties’ light comedy, perhaps I ought to use it for
Macbeth
!
So for the first scene we suddenly went to blackout and, after people had got over their initial shock, it was a very eerie experience. We then heard the witches talking in the darkness. When you see the witches for the first time people often think, “Oh, so that’s how they’re doing the witches.” The fact that you couldn’t see them gave the scene a real intensity. It made you really listen to it. In the early previews we dropped in three little amplifiers at exactly the height where the witches would have been standing. The actors were backstageand their voices came through via microphone. Then when they said “Hover through the fog and filthy air,” we flew out the amplifiers over the audience’s heads, so that what you thought was the voice of a woman in front of you suddenly flew over your head. But it was so freaky, and people became so disturbed by it, only a minute or two into the play, that we decided it was too much.
I think as always with Shakespeare part of what we were trying to do was surprise people: make them think that something was what they thought it was and then suddenly it was not. The whole back wall of the Swan was in fact a fake back wall. Everybody knew the Swan, it looked like the wall of the Swan, but when we came to the apparition scene suddenly the apparitions pushed through the wall. The wall had sections which were painted and textured like brick, but were actually made of wetsuit material, so that when the actors pushed their faces into it they came through the wall. Something solid suddenly became fluid. Then at the end of the banquet, just as Lady Macbeth left the stage with her candle, all of the other candles left on the table suddenly, magically, went out. In fact it was the witches, who had been hidden under the table through the entire scene, pulling the wicks down through the table. Then they threw the table up and appeared to the audience. It shocked them silly because the chairs went flying and the banquet table suddenly flew into the air. We then went straight on into the next scene where Macbeth visits the witches.
We took all those moments and tried genuinely to work out how you frighten an audience, and how to create the equivalent effect that Shakespeare suggests for a skeptical modern audience.
Goold: I always felt the key to the supernatural was less in finding a modern correlative than in playing up the political world in which the play operates. Ghosts, witches, and visions are fearsome in their own right, but what makes them terrifying is when they prey on the minds of political figures in positions of power. They are manifestations of political crisis as much as a paranormal worldview, so we just always tried to ground and make detailed the paranoid police state that Scotland becomes in the play and that seemed to make the supernatural all the more shocking.
More specifically, the weird or “weyard” sisters have been variously played as old hags, classical Fates, alluring nymphs, and many interpretations in-between: how did you and your cast set about realizing them?
Nunn: It was very important in our
Black Comedy
at the Donmar. The play opens with the very interesting convention that the lights don’t go on and you hear the characters talking as if they’re in full light, and then suddenly all the lights go on and the characters continue the rest of the play as if they are in total darkness. At the first preview I made sure there was a total blackout and stood at the back of the auditorium to make sure that nobody came in and broke it. Within a minute or two a lady scuttled up the aisle and banged into me, trying to get out because she couldn’t tolerate the darkness. I thought if that can happen in a sixties’ light comedy, perhaps I ought to use it for
Macbeth
!
So for the first scene we suddenly went to blackout and, after people had got over their initial shock, it was a very eerie experience. We then heard the witches talking in the darkness. When you see the witches for the first time people often think, “Oh, so that’s how they’re doing the witches.” The fact that you couldn’t see them gave the scene a real intensity. It made you really listen to it. In the early previews we dropped in three little amplifiers at exactly the height where the witches would have been standing. The actors were backstageand their voices came through via microphone. Then when they said “Hover through the fog and filthy air,” we flew out the amplifiers over the audience’s heads, so that what you thought was the voice of a woman in front of you suddenly flew over your head. But it was so freaky, and people became so disturbed by it, only a minute or two into the play, that we decided it was too much.
I think as always with Shakespeare part of what we were trying to do was surprise people: make them think that something was what they thought it was and then suddenly it was not. The whole back wall of the Swan was in fact a fake back wall. Everybody knew the Swan, it looked like the wall of the Swan, but when we came to the apparition scene suddenly the apparitions pushed through the wall. The wall had sections which were painted and textured like brick, but were actually made of wetsuit material, so that when the actors pushed their faces into it they came through the wall. Something solid suddenly became fluid. Then at the end of the banquet, just as Lady Macbeth left the stage with her candle, all of the other candles left on the table suddenly, magically, went out. In fact it was the witches, who had been hidden under the table through the entire scene, pulling the wicks down through the table. Then they threw the table up and appeared to the audience. It shocked them silly because the chairs went flying and the banquet table suddenly flew into the air. We then went straight on into the next scene where Macbeth visits the witches.
We took all those moments and tried genuinely to work out how you frighten an audience, and how to create the equivalent effect that Shakespeare suggests for a skeptical modern audience.
Goold: I always felt the key to the supernatural was less in finding a modern correlative than in playing up the political world in which the play operates. Ghosts, witches, and visions are fearsome in their own right, but what makes them terrifying is when they prey on the minds of political figures in positions of power. They are manifestations of political crisis as much as a paranormal worldview, so we just always tried to ground and make detailed the paranoid police state that Scotland becomes in the play and that seemed to make the supernatural all the more shocking.
More specifically, the weird or “weyard” sisters have been variously played as old hags, classical Fates, alluring nymphs, and many interpretations in-between: how did you and your cast set about realizing them?
Nunn: It was very important in our
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