Michael
Nardone and Kirsty Besterman were given the keys to the kingdom when they were
cast as Lord and Lady Macbeth in Rufus Norris’ National Theatre production of
Shakespeare’s Scottish play. Picking up the mantles of Rory Kinnear and Anne-Marie
Duff, who played the murderously ambitious couple for the London run of Norris’
apocalyptic-looking production proved irresistible to both actors, who came to
it with strong track records of doing classic plays onstage. In what sounds
like a radical reinvention of Shakespeare’s play, the production’s dark mix of
the personal and the political nevertheless cast a spell on them in a way where
the flesh and blood everyday passions of the couple are brought home.
“I wanted to try and give Macbeth a real edge
as an honest kind of man,” says Fife-born Nardone, who will be appearing on a
Scottish stage for the first time in several years. “His relationship with the
king is really important, and at the beginning of the play he knows his
position and understands the virtue of loyalty. Then, as everyone in the world
who’s ever existed does, he becomes tempted by something else, and he and his
wife try to do it together, but they mess it up.”
As
Nardone sees it, “The emotional relationship between Macbeth and his wife is
crucial. They’ve been through this tragedy of losing their children, and they
try to fulfil this vision. We can see today on TV all the time what happens to
people who get a taste for that sort of thing, and for me the tragedy of
Macbeth is that a perfectly good relationship is destroyed.
He’s
reliant on her, and he’s the muscle, but she’s the brains. It’s all quite sad
to see what happens.”
For
Besterman too, the relationship between the Macbeths is the play’s driving
force.
“I’ve
always wanted to play Lady Macbeth with them having a strong marriage at the
start,” she says. “They’ve had this terrible loss of their children, and they
have this language between them. I don’t think Lady Macbeth is as mad as she’s
sometimes played, certainly not at the start of the play when Macbeth has come
back from the war and there’s this real passion between them, and they want to
feel like that all the time.
“It’s
obviously an epic story about murder, but there’s something there as well about
this couple having an idea, being impulsive and not thinking it through, then
finding themselves in a situation where they can’t cope with what they’ve done.
He can’t cope with power, and instead of this incredibly loving and passionate
thing they had they end up with this broken-down relationship that destroys
them.”
Beyond
the Macbeths’ domestic turmoil, there is a much bigger picture at play in an
onstage world that seems to be tearing itself apart.
“The
concept is quite specific,” Besterman explains. “It’s futuristic. It’s civil
war. I love the darkness of it. There’s passion and loss and sadness, and the
way Michael plays Macbeth, he does it so, yes, he’s a monster, but he’s still
vulnerable, and that comes from what’s going on in the world around him.”
For
Nardone, Macbeth’s ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow’ soliloquy has a far greater resonance
than a reflection on his personal downfall.
“He’s
not so much questioning the meaning of his own life,” Nardone says, “but of the
whole meaning of existence and all the things you put up with. I think of that
myself when I look around me and see people living in poverty and pain, and it
makes you wonder why.”
Besterman
and Nardone are no strangers to Scotland’s stages. Besterman appeared in
productions of Noel Coward’s play, Private Lives, and Laura Wade’s stage
adaptation of Sarah Waters’ novel, Tipping The Velvet, at the Royal Lyceum
Theatre, Edinburgh. Besterman was last in Edinburgh earlier this year at
Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre in Out of Joint’s production of Roland
Schimmelpfennig’s play, Winter Solstice.
Elsewhere,
in terms of Shakespearian roles, Besterman played Portia in The Merchant of
Venice at Shakespeare’s Globe, Cordelia in King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare
Company and Bianca in Cheek by Jowl’s production of Othello.
“I
suppose it’s quite a diversion for me,” she says of playing Lady Macbeth. “I’ve
done a lot of Noel Coward and camp roles, and now here I am stomping about in
Doc Martens and vests.”
Nardone
first came to prominence in the original production of David Harrower’s modern
classic, Knives in Hens, at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh. He also appeared
in the world premiere of Gregory Burke’s debut play, Gagarin Way at the
Traverse and the National Theatre, and worked with Burke again on the National
Theatre of Scotland production of Black Watch.
Macbeth
will be Nardone’s first major stage role since he appeared with with the
National Theatre in 2014 as the Duke of Cornwall in Sam Mendes’ production of
King Lear starring Simon Russell Beale in the title role. Nardone previously
worked with Norris at the Young Vic in the title role of Tanya Ronder’s
adaptation of Lope de Vega’s seventeenth century Spanish play, Peribanez. Having
focused on TV and film over the last few years with regular roles in the likes
of River City and HBO series, Rome, Macbeth was too good an offer to turn down.
“I
couldn’t really say no,” Nardone says. “I’m 51 now, and in a couple of years’
time I probably wouldn’t be able to do it., but for me, the vision of this
production to me is very acute, because you can see in it the result of what
happens in a divided society. One little bit of unrest, and everything falls
apart and descends into chaos. That’s something that currently doesn’t feel
very far away. I’m old enough to remember the three-day week and saw everything
that happened in the 1970s, and there’s a clarity to this production that makes
Macbeth a story for our times.”
Macbeth,
Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, October 20-27; His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen,
November 7-10; Theatre Royal, Glasgow, February 19-23 2019.
The Herald, October 23rd 2018
ends
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