Macbeth and Ian McKellen - Judi Dench

Last night I watched a theatrical performance of Macbeth, featuring Ian McKellen and Judi Dench. The production was directed by Trevor Nunn, and the TV version was directed by Philip Casson. 

It was incredible and made me love the play even more.

Everyone is excellent but the two main actors naturally dominate the play, and Ian McKellen and Judi Dench both convey very well the complexity, the conflict in their characters: Macbeth, unlike Othello, knows perfectly well what he’s doing and what the consequences would be, and has in his mind a million different reasons not to kill Duncan, but still does it; Lady Macbeth is the one who comes up with the plan and urges Macbeth to act like a man but isn’t as strong as she convinces herself to be; both of them fall apart, both of them face their damnation, in different ways. 

(If you want a great literary work about the guilt, the struggle of a couple after killing someone, Shakespeare’s play is it, not a certain novel I shall not name).

Lady Macbeth at the beginning seems to think of killing Duncan as something abstract, something simple and easy that could be washed away with water, and only afterwards realises the enormity of what they have done. But Macbeth cannot stop there—once he kills Duncan, he has to kill Banquo; once Banquo’s dead, he has to kill Macduff… I like the way Judi Dench cries “You must leave this.” (Act 3 scene 2) when Ian McKellen’s Macbeth talks about killing Banquo, but I especially love the way she says these 2 similar lines: 

“What’s done is done.” (ibid.) 

And later, when she has gone mad and is talking to herself in front of the doctor and the gentlewoman: 

“What’s done cannot be undone.” (Act 5 scene 1) 

When reading the play, I didn’t quite think about the way the second line seems to mirror/repeat the first but is very different.

The tragedy of Macbeth is the tragedy of one who knows full well the evil of his actions but cannot stop and must continue, who has to convince himself that it doesn’t matter because nothing matters. There isn’t much I can say about Ian McKellen—he is perfect as Macbeth. The peak is in the “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” soliloquy—I have always liked the soliloquy, it became much better when I read it in the play, in the full context, and it became even better when I watched it performed by Ian McKellen, especially the last few lines: 

“…It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.” (Act 5 scene 5)

I haven’t seen any other production so can’t compare, but I do like the way this one conveys some uncertainty in the ending, as the ending in Shakespeare’s play seems to mirror the beginning: the play begins in blood and ends in blood, both have a hero killing a traitor, the old king (Duncan) was seen as virtuous but was naïve, will the new king (Malcolm) be fit to govern? 

If you haven’t seen this production, here it is.