The audience was being splattered by blood and mud and tickets were being scalped for as much as 1,000 pounds each. Now American audiences will have that privilege when the Manchester International Festival’s visceral production of “Macbeth,” starring Kenneth Branagh, opens next June at the Park Avenue Armory. Incredibly, this will mark the New York stage debut of Branagh, one of the greatest Shakespearean actors of his generation.
Tickets to “Macbeth” earlier this summer in Manchester were especially dear because the production was mounted for only 18 performances in a deconsecrated church that sat 260. It’s not clear how long the show will be on in New York but the production, co-directed by Branagh and Rob Ashford, will be re-configured within the Armory’s 55,000 square footage, which can accommodate anywhere from 200 to 5,000 patrons. Alex Kingston, best-known in this country as Dr. Elizabeth Corday on the TV series “ER,” will play Lady Macbeth
The Manchester production opened to strong notices. Michael Billington, writing in the Guardian, noted that Branagh’s performance “evoked the golden memories of Olivier in the role,” while Ben Brantley in the New York Times called it “an utterly assured and intelligent portrait of a desperate and less-than-brilliant man.”
The comparison to Laurence Olivier is apt since Branagh has been haunted by the ghost of the brilliant Shakespearean actor as much as Macbeth is by Banquo. Now 52, the English actor won acclaim and Oscar nominations early in his career for his movie versions of “Henry V” (1989) and “Hamlet” (1996). He even played Sir Larry in the film “My Week with Marilyn,” sniping cruelly at Michelle Williams’s Marilyn Monroe. But it is has been over a decade since Branagh’s taken on a Shakespearean role (“Richard III”). And he returns in a production shot through with adrenalin.
This “Macbeth” moves along with the speed of a bullet, an intermission-less two hours filled with gore and ghosts, battles and recrimination. The new setting is even more resonant than a deconsecrated church for the production, as pointed out in a statement by Rebecca Robertson, president and executive producer of the Park Avenue Armory.
It read: “We are ecstatic to collaborate with Rob Ashford and Kenneth Branagh, combining their incredible vision with our unconventional space and military history to allow audiences to relive this timeless story in a remarkable new way.”
The production anchors the Armory’s season in much the same way as the Royal Shakespeare Company did in 2011 when they constructed a full-scale replica of their Stratford-on-Avon home and presented five productions over six weeks there. Armory subscribers will have advance access to tickets to “Macbeth,” so keep your eye on announcements and membership information on their website.
Meanwhile if you can’t get enough of the Scottish Thane and his ballsy wife — “Come you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the top top-full of direst cruelty!” — there’s also Ethan Hawke’s interpretation this fall at Lincoln Center Theater. Directed by Jack O’Brien, the production will co-star Anne-Marie Duff as Lady Macbeth and will run October 24-November 21. Branagh may steal some of Hawke’s thunder, but I wouldn’t dismiss this earlier version. The last collaboration at Lincoln Center between O’Brien and Hawke — “Henry IV, Parts One and Two” — was an unmitigated and Tony-winning triumph. This one seems just as promising.
With Alan Cumming just having finished a run on Broadway as the Scottish Thane, those “weird sisters” certainly have been busy over their cauldrons. The “hurly burly” is far from being done.
Photos by Johan Persson via Facebook
