Abbey Theatre - Amharclann na Mainistreach

Why did you choose Macbeth?

I’ve always loved Shakespeare. The first thing I directed was A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the mechanicals section, and it went really well. When the opportunity arose to suggest a few plays to Fiach Mac Conghail (the director of the Abbey Theatre) we agreed on Macbeth because I love the politics in the play, it’s the politics of paranoia. No one really suggests to him he has to kill the king then he goes and kills the king. I also identified with the main character. Okay, he’s an anti-hero but I can kind of see where he’s coming from.

I’ve seen Macbeth more often than any other play. I’ve seen about eighteen productions. It’s always thrilled me, every time, from school productions to whatever.

Can you say a bit more about Macbeth as a character? You call him an anti-hero and he’s also really exciting. How does that work? Is he evil? Are we meant to like him?

It’s interesting; Macbeth is sometimes used to suit the time. In the 19th century it was all supernatural spirits but post World War II, when we realised evil was in people, it’s a very useful play for seeing this too.

I mean what does Macbeth do wrong? He kills a king but other characters have done that. I think you have to look at what was going on at the time to see what sort of significance he might have had.

Queen Elizabeth has just died and James I comes along and suddenly you have the strong male for the first time since Henry VIII. So basically, apart from how they talked about Elizabeth, men still saw women as weak. The Puritan spirit was also rising, part of which was that theatre was impure and that people in general weren’t pure enough. And I think Shakespeare was reflecting this. His plays from the turn of the century got a little darker. Macbeth is like a revenge thriller; there is something very dynamic about it.

So Shakespeare was seeing certain things coming into play – the police state, philosophical changes and more political machinations. In my head, and this is complete speculation, I think he foresaw Cromwell, who, of course, was only forty years later. In Ted Hughes’ Shakespeare and the Goddess of Complete Being Hughes mentions that when Cromwell was four, which was about the time that Macbeth was being written, he had a dream that he would become king. Cromwell told his master and he got beaten for it. The only person in British history who has killed a king was Cromwell and he changed the landscape forever after that.

Also around Cromwell there were people like the Levellers, and other movements of a socialist bent. There was a theme in the air of the Common Man. In contrast to this Charles I had this idea that the King was God. I was thinking Macbeth is doing something in the light of this political shift. Maybe that’s the context in which he thinks he’s doing the right thing.

So my production is looking at a Cromwellian period, kind of in Ireland. But I’m not trying to be completely true to the period. We just have to suggest this in the costumes and this can give the sense that then and now exist beside each other.

I think the 1600s onwards were as paranoid as the last ten years have been here.

How are you going to make the witches frightening?

I think one of the things that’s frightening are people themselves, rather than people going ‘Whooo!’ I think human beings are genuinely frightening, when you look at them. And witches actually existed, there were people practicing witchcraft. And it’s what these weird sisters, as women not ghosts; it’s what they put into play that will be frightening. Basically I want the actors to play them as very forceful, very dynamic women. They’re more interesting and frightening as real people rather than as otherworldly spirits.

Is this a play about loss of humanity?

And about when you achieve what you want, you get hollowed out. At the end there’s all those great speeches about ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow…’. It’s as if he hasn’t felt anything for a long time and suddenly Lady Macbeth’s death or suicide prompts a response. It’s a memory maybe more than an actual emotion. So, yes, he does get dehumanised.

But remember the worst thing he does, worse than killing Duncan, worse than killing Banquo – that’s a real Godfather thing he does, like in Godfather 2 when Michael kills his brother Freddo? – the worst thing he does is slaughter Macduff’s family. Yet when he’s confronted by Maduff, Macbeth says I cannot fight you “my soul is too much charged/ With blood of thine already.” So there’s something there, some weird, noble, honour thing has remained, however perverted. I don’t think he’s triumphant in that moment.

What does a director do?

It’s difficult to summarise. There are as many different directors as there are actors. You have directors like John Dexter, who did The Royal Hunt of the Sun, who staged things very elaborately but didn’t seem to care much about the actors’ process. And then you’ve got directors who were very good with actors, like Eli Kazan, who got in there with the actors, pushed them forward and helped them find their way to create that role. Then there are people like Peter Brook and everything becomes organic. He talks about it like guiding, as if you’re in a ship.

Which I quite like. I quite like the idea that you’re searching for a way into the jungle and then out of the jungle. Because texts are very strange, people come at them in different ways. What you try and do is keep everybody’s creativity going in the room – your own as much as everybody else’s. I don’t believe directors should just sit back and allow everybody else to create. It’s about helping people find the key. The director’s main job is to keep everybody in as fertile, as open-to-suggestion a state as possible.

How do you work with your actors?

I like actors who are open and are willing to try something. Some actors don’t give much in the rehearsal room and save it all for the performance. I prefer to have it all out in the rehearsal room.

Acting is an extraordinary profession, very difficult, very emotionally wearing. Because you are basically surrendering a part of yourself to get this character. So you are changing your shape a little bit.

There always has to be discussion. I mean I’d never work with a designer who just went away then brought back a set and said, ‘This is it’. It’s the same with actors. There has to be a fluid conversation going on.

So the actors will change this production of Macbeth?

Yes but also part of the creative process is casting. Nowadays I’m taking more and more time to cast something. I mean in this one I’ve got Aidan Kelly (as Macbeth) and Eileen Walsh (as Lady Macbeth) and I’ve worked with them a good bit over the last six years. And they’re both at the top of the game.

So, is paranoia going to be a major theme of your production?

Paranoia is a major theme of most of the things I do. I think the paranoia’s in there, it depends how much you want to bring it out. With Macbeth he has that very strong relationship with Banquo that fizzles out due to the fact he hears Banquo’s son is gong to become king. He has a sort of strange distant relationship with Macduff and then there’s the one with his wife, which disintegrates.

And why is there much less of Lady Macbeth in the second half?

It’s different reactions to the events. He sees the consequences of his actions and she either blinkers it (or doesn’t, depending on how we decide to do it). And then from the banquet scene onwards she begins to disintegrate because she sees this wasn’t such a good thing to do. Which is interesting because that’s guilt and that’s a different thing to what he has. He’s had guilt at the beginning, or he’s had the thought that ‘This could be guilt’ but he goes somewhere else with it. So that drives them apart, they’re not quite as in union as they thought they were.

How is the play relevant to today?

When you do a bad, bad thing it comes back and kicks you. I don’t mean it’s a morality tale. It’s the dynamic of the play because people will do the wrong thing because they think they’re doing the right thing. And this play shows you’ve got to be a bit nobler than that, to put it very simplistically. The Macbeths know it’s wrong but they do it to achieve what they think is best for him and then things get progressively worse after that. I think that theme is always relevant. Also lust for power is constant and it’s almost always a destructive lust.

And again it’s the paranoia; the constant terror that’s underneath things, that I think is as relevant now as ever. I think most people are steeped in some sort of paranoia. It’s part of being in the world. Because what is paranoia? It’s thinking people are going to get you and it’s true. Because most people are trying to get one over on you whether they mean it or not. It may not be destructive but it’s there. It’s part of our DNA.

Did you see Shakespeare when you were a teenager?

I saw Macbeth when I was about fifteen. It was amazing. There were about five people in the cast and it was in a school hall. People were laughing and everything and yet I still remembered a lot of it. It wasn’t the best production but it was dynamic. You’ve got to see it live.