Ralph Fiennes staged his Macbeth in a warehouse at the Royal Highland Centre, right beside Edinburgh Airport, and we went to see it last night. We were sitting ducks for the cheeky £10 parking charge because there was nowhere else to park in the vicinity. When we entered the audience area we had to walk through the back of the stage area, which was like the aftermath of a battle, with a couple of soldiers sitting about and watching us sullenly as we went past. It was set in an unspecified time of modern warfare, at first I thought that the sound effects of planes zooming overhead were the real sound of planes taking off from Edinburgh Airport, but then I realised that they sounded too military! The stage was cleverly designed with a two level building which had plenty of doors where the characters could enter and exit.
Thus the atmosphere was set for an absolutely marvellous production of Macbeth. Ralph was excellent as a rather world weary and grimacing Macbeth; in fact Gordon compared him to the late Leonard Rossiter when playing Rigsby in Rising Damp, which I thought was very funny! Indira Varma was suitably scheming as Lady Macbeth, and all of the supporting cast were very good. I have seen Macbeth a lot of times and in fact used to teach it to 4th Years, so I thought that I might be a bit jaded, but not at all, the energy of the production swept me along. When Ralph finally met his doom and collapsed onto the stage, he was clearly a bit out of breath after his fight with MacDuff, and his rib cage was heaving up and down, which a corpse’s shouldn’t! But then Ralph is no longer in the first flush of youth; he is sixty-one, about eight days older than me. I thought that it was a great production, and I look forward to seeing David Tennant as Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse in London, he will have to work hard to surpass Ralph Fiennes.
Thus the atmosphere was set for an absolutely marvellous production of Macbeth. Ralph was excellent as a rather world weary and grimacing Macbeth; in fact Gordon compared him to the late Leonard Rossiter when playing Rigsby in Rising Damp, which I thought was very funny! Indira Varma was suitably scheming as Lady Macbeth, and all of the supporting cast were very good. I have seen Macbeth a lot of times and in fact used to teach it to 4th Years, so I thought that I might be a bit jaded, but not at all, the energy of the production swept me along. When Ralph finally met his doom and collapsed onto the stage, he was clearly a bit out of breath after his fight with MacDuff, and his rib cage was heaving up and down, which a corpse’s shouldn’t! But then Ralph is no longer in the first flush of youth; he is sixty-one, about eight days older than me. I thought that it was a great production, and I look forward to seeing David Tennant as Macbeth at the Donmar Warehouse in London, he will have to work hard to surpass Ralph Fiennes.
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