ALAS, when we come to the two main players, there isn't a hint of virtuosity. If the AST wanted to import someone to play just the single role of Macbeth this summer, why pick Fritz Weaver? Fifteen years ago Weaver attempted Hamlet here, without much success. He hasn't improved in the interim.
Macbeth happens to be a great military general who speaks consistently the greatest poetry of any character in the canon. In real life we don't often find military, compositional and oratorical genius combined in one man--though we had a recent example, starting with the same three letters, in Douglas MacArthur (the comparison shouldn't be pushed any further, needless to say). Macbeth must start off as an admirable person, sink into murder after murder, and bounce back somewhat at the end, winning our pity as a tragic hero despite his crimes. Not easy, but it can be done.
Weaver gives us a Macbeth that fails to engage interest; we just don't care a rap about the guy. Weaver has a rather unattractive voice, and doesn't use well what he has. He fails to penetrate the sense or the rhythm of his lines. And he has never learned how to breathe properly; so we are subjected constantly to his whiffling, snuffling, and gasping. Here he falls into empty ranting, there he delivers a serious line so that it elicits a laugh. One wishes too that he didn't address his servant twice as "patch," when Shakespeare wrote "whey-face" the second time. Wonderful word, "whey-face."
Weaver's final duel with Macduff is much too tame, particularly for those who saw Christopher Plummer's breathtaking swordplay in Cyrano recently. At the end, he pulls out a dagger and seems about to commit suicide when he falls off a parapet; suicide is something no real Macbeth would entertain.
A tiny bouquet, however, for one line-reading. When Macbeth starts up the stairs to kill the king, and a bell rings, almost all editions have him say, "Hear it not, Duncan, for it is a knell/That summons thee to heaven, or to hell." Weaver says, "me to hell." This is an emendation I have always found rather appealing. Aside from the internal rhyme of the contrasting pronouns, it implies that the saintly king will surely achieve salvation and that Macbeth fully realizes the enormity of what he is about to do. It was a pleasure to hear this reading used on stage for a change.
Rosemary Murphy, also brought in for only one role, emphasizes the sensual side of Lady Macbeth. She enjoys wearing a revealing gown with an open V down to the navel. She likes physical touching: the feel of her own or Macbeth's hands running down her skin, the tousling of Macbeth's hair with her affectionate fingers.
Vocally, however, she is not strong enough--the same fault she showed here a decade ago when trying the not unsimilar part of Goneril in King Lear. In talking of the murder plot, when Macbeth asks, "If we should fail?," her reply--"We fail?"--lacks the foreceful scorn, the reassuring incredulity needed to prop his weakening resolve. A sensual Lady Macbeth is perfectly valid, but the role requires a decided steak of masculinity, such as captured so imposingly in the portrayals of Dame Judith Anderson, Mrs. Tore Segelcke, and Siobhan McKenna.
When she comes from her bedchamber, goes through her sleep-walking scene and returns to bed, it is not clear why Miss Murphy enters from the right and exits to the left. Her performance will probably improve as the weeks pass, for at the critics' opening she was not yet even secure in her lines.
Miss Murphy does have one marvelous piece of business in her "unsex me here" soliloquy. When she summons "thick night" and the "smoke of hell," she grabs the pointed crucifix hanging around her neck and spits on it. At the words "my keen knife" she inverts the cross, turning it into a lethal dagger. This is an electrifying moment, altogether fitting for a play in which "fair is foul" and everything is topsy-turvy.
JACK Gwillim is a kindly, virtuous King Duncan; and it is a felicitous touch to have him embrace Macbeth before retiring to his final sleep. Kurt Garfield's bleeding Captain sounds more Jewish than Scottish, Theodore Sorel's Angus is poorly spoken too, and Richard Backus' Donalbain is weak. Jeanne Bartlett is adequate as the ill-fated Lady Macduff, and William Larsen's old Siward is a decided asset. Macduff's son (Glenn Zachar) is far too old; so is Fleance (Keith McDermott), who seems to be assisted in his escape by the mysterious Third Murderer engaged to kill him (is a double agent at work here?).
Even Lee Richardson, who was so fine a Ross years ago in a Boston production and who has played the title role at Yale (would he were doing it here!), strikes one as curiously uninvolved. His appearances at the banquet as a ghost, however, are cleverly managed.
Rex Everhart is splendid in his one comic cameo as the drunken Porter. Coleridge thought this scene spurious, but it is genuine Shakespeare and inspired dramaturgy. After murdering Duncan, Macbeth hears the chilling pounding at the gate and has second thoughts: "Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!" How follow such a climactic moment? Shakespeare's solution was perfect. The only comparable spot I can think of occurs in the finale of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, when the full chorus climaxes thrillingly with words about "standing before God," and is followed by the ludicrously syncopated sounds of a distant street-march.
It is what Bernard Shaw called Shakespeare's "word music" that is so lacking generally in this Macbeth, though it is there in unsurpassed abundance in the text. The only scene placed in England, which comes well towards the end, is the single instance where its three main participants show a full feeling for the melody and rhythm of their lines as well as the sense. Praise, then, for Michael Levin's Macduff, Alvah Stanley's Ross, and, above all, Philip Kerr's Malcolm. In this colloquy these three men talk to each other, listen to each other, and demonstrate their musicality. But it is a long, long time before we get to this beautifully spoken scene.
In an attempt to put the disappointing performances of the two principals out of my mind as I drove home, I tried to think of players whose work I had seen but whose performances as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth I most regretted missing. I extrapolated that I would have most admired the Macbeths of Laurence Olivier and Ian Keith, and the Lady Macbeths of Florence Reed and Dame Sybil Thorndike. Well, there will be more productions of Macbeth; and, unlike Macduff in the just-cited scene, I have not lost my hopes.
(Ed. Note--The drive to the picturesque American Shakespeare Theatre's grounds on the Housatonic River takes about two and a half hours via the Massachusetts Turnpike, Interstate 91, and the Connecticut Turnpike to Exit 32 or 31. Performances in the air-conditioned Theatre traditionally tend to begin promptly at either 2 p.m. or 8:30 p.m. There are free facilities for picnickers on the premises.)