Reviewed by:

• Macbeth by William Shakespeare
• Christopher Crosbie (bio)

The penultimate figure in Jacques’ “seven ages of man” soliloquy brilliantly conveys the vulnerabilities of old age, presenting us with a person living in “a world too wide for his shrunk shank” (2.7.160-1). As the body weakens for this figure, the surrounding world seems larger and more unsettling, perhaps dangerous. This rhetorical move is spatial but the effect cinematic. We can almost feel the distortions happening within and around the isolated individual, exposed in a world where agency itself seems to diminish.

It may seem unnatural to bring the forest of Arden marching toward Scotland, yet this dialectic of shrinking figures and a world of overwhelming scope informs so much of Simon Godwin’s compelling production of Macbeth, adapted by Emily Burns and starring Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, DC. The production presents a world of immense, unstoppable violence, a place where tsunamis of human brutality relentlessly sweep across everything in their path; at the same time, it gives us, in the very best ways, a claustrophobic world where shattered individuals, more often than not, only serve to make matters worse. Rather than worrying whether Shakespeare offers us a national or personal tragedy, this Macbeth effectively marshals its interest in both the play’s broad scope and its sense of intimate collapse to yield a tale as much about fatigue and despair as about sound and fury.

Performed in a warehouse away from the STC’s usual venue, Godwin’s Macbeth immediately announces its status as a different kind of theatrical event, immersive virtually from the outset. The warehouse’s outer section houses concessions, ad hoc restrooms, modest seating, and a curiously large sculpture of the letter “M,” a somewhat odd accent choice, but one that doesn’t quite detract from the general atmosphere. Mist descends from above, filtering through hanging lighting, which guides the audience past a curtained border into a cavernous space designed to look like a section of a city ravaged by war. Three trees, inexplicably preserved from the destruction, stand spaced apart, overlooking a scene of otherwise complete desolation. Here, the audience encounters a detailed wasteland strewn with rubble, the scorched remnants of civilization half buried throughout, as two paths snake their way toward the main theater space, not yet fully visible itself. Whether intentional or not, the artifacts still legible amid the rubble point their way toward the play that will follow. A [End Page 399] child’s red scooter, emblem of carefree mobility and possibility, lays crushed; the wire framing of a bed’s boxspring rests beside this, a twisted mockery of a space where, once, someone was able to sleep. A sedan of indeterminate make sits nearby, glowing from within as the ceaseless crackling of embers emerges from hidden speakers. The piercing sounds of flyovers by unseen jets informs the audience that this devastation represents the result of an ongoing conflict, and that they are entering an imaginary version of what is all-too-real for all-too-many, one where death, loss, and destruction can be visited from unseen forces well above and beyond one’s own limited reach. Shrunk shanks and wide worlds, indeed. And, as this play bears out, not dependent upon age for making the force of this disparity fully felt.

This wasteland remains invisible to the audience during the performance itself, and the main stage brings a marked shift in perspective. Set design here is smaller in scale: a modest rectangular stage thrusts outward; broad center stairs ascend, then branch to thinner ones on the left and right; four doors stand on the sides, two at the base and two at the apex of the narrower stairs. After such sweeping scope, this is the audience’s world for the entirety of the play itself, giving the performance a sense of intimacy, of localizing the action’s trauma in more particular and personal terms. Every bit of the stage remains whole and intact, save two sections, one front-left and one...

 审阅者：

• 
  威廉·莎士比亚的《麦克白》
• 
  克里斯托弗·克罗斯比（简介）

雅克“人类的七个时代”独白中的倒数第二个人物出色地传达了老年的脆弱性，向我们展示了一个生活在“对于他缩小的小腿来说过于广阔的世界”的人（2.7.160-1）。随着这个人物的身体逐渐衰弱，周围的世界似乎变得更大、更令人不安，甚至可能是危险的。这种修辞手法是空间性的，但效果却是电影化的。我们几乎可以感觉到孤立的个人内部和周围发生的扭曲，暴露在一个代理本身似乎减弱的世界中。

将雅顿森林带向苏格兰似乎有些不自然，但西蒙·戈德温 (Simon Godwin) 执导的《麦克白》(Macbeth)引人注目，这部作品由艾米丽·伯恩斯 (Emily Burns) 改编，由拉尔夫·费因斯 (Ralph Fiennes) 和英迪拉·瓦玛 (Indira Varma) 主演。莎士比亚剧团在华盛顿特区。这部作品呈现了一个充满巨大、不可阻挡的暴力的世界，一个人类暴行的海啸无情地席卷所经之处的一切的地方；与此同时，它以最好的方式为我们提供了一个幽闭恐怖的世界，在这个世界中，破碎的个人往往只会让事情变得更糟。这部《麦克白》并不担心莎士比亚是否给我们带来了一场国家悲剧或个人悲剧，而是有效地将其对戏剧的广阔范围和亲密崩溃感的兴趣结合在一起，产生了一个关于疲劳和绝望以及声音和愤怒的故事。

戈德温的《麦克白》在远离 STC 通常场地的仓库中演出，立即宣布其作为一种不同类型的戏剧活动的地位，从一开始就几乎让人身临其境。仓库的外部区域设有特许经营区、临时卫生间、简陋的座位，以及一个奇怪的大型字母“M”雕塑，这是一种有点奇怪的口音选择，但并没有完全影响整体氛围。雾气从上方飘落，透过悬挂的灯光，引导观众穿过窗帘边框进入一个洞穴般的空间，该空间的设计看起来就像是被战争蹂躏的城市的一部分。三棵树，莫名其妙地没有受到破坏，它们间隔开地矗立着，俯瞰着一片荒凉的景象。在这里，观众遇到了一片布满瓦砾的荒原，烧焦的文明遗迹被半埋在其中，两条小路蜿蜒通向主剧院空间，但尚未完全可见。无论是有意还是无意，废墟中的文物仍然清晰可见，为接下来的剧情指明了方向。一辆[完第399页]儿童的红色踏板车，象征着无忧无虑的机动性和可能性，被压碎了；床的弹簧钢丝框架就放在旁边，这是对一个曾经有人可以睡觉的空间的扭曲嘲弄。附近停着一辆型号不明的轿车，隐藏的扬声器中不断发出余烬的噼啪声，轿车从内部发出光芒。 看不见的喷气式飞机飞过天桥时发出的刺耳声音告诉观众，这场破坏代表了一场持续冲突的结果，他们正在进入一个对太多人来说太真实的想象版本，一个死亡、损失的地方，而破坏可能来自远远超出个人能力范围的看不见的力量。的确，缩小的小腿和广阔的世界。而且，正如这部剧所证明的那样，充分感受到这种差异的力量并不依赖于年龄。

在表演过程中，观众看不到这片荒地，而主舞台则带来了明显的视角转变。这里的布景设计规模较小：一个朴素的矩形舞台向外突出；中央宽阔的楼梯向上延伸，然后分支到左右两侧较细的楼梯；四扇门位于两侧，两扇位于较窄楼梯的底部，两扇位于顶部。在如此广阔的范围之后，这就是整个戏剧本身的观众世界，赋予表演一种亲密感，以更具体和个人的方式定位动作的创伤。舞台的每一部分都保持完整和完整，除了两个部分，一个左前和一个......