The Play

“Now o’er the one half-world | Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse | The curtain’d sleep.”
Macbeth, II.ii.49-51

One of the greatest works in Western literature, 'Macbeth' explores the very nature of human existence: love and duty, power and loss, good and evil.

A barren, post-apocalyptic wasteland, dead trees, and broken mirrors. Cambridge American Stage Tour’s 2011 production of Shakespeare’s tragic masterpiece presents a nightmarish vision of the future, where nothing is quite as it seems. Inspired by modern dystopian fiction, prepare to descend into a landscape of broken dreams and bloody ambitions, inhabited by murderers and madmen. In a world of royal isolation, amidst smiling courtiers and a promise of immortality, Macbeth is king of nothing.

Under the patronage of Dame Judi Dench, CAST has given sixteen students the opportunity to tour America over the past twelve years, establishing itself as one of the most prestigious tour shows in Cambridge, performing across the East Coast in cities from New York to New Orleans, Boston, Washington DC and Miami.

 

Director's Notes

Macbeth is Shakespeare’s most fearful play. Nowhere else does the word appear more in his work. What first struck me, when returning to the play, was the way in which fear acts as a stimulant and a sedative. Even so, whilst Macbeth is described as Shakespeare’s ‘anatomy of fear’, I think there is something more profound going on in these pages. For me, the Scottish Play represents a ‘tragedy of the imagination’. It reveals the possibilities of what it is to be motivated by repressed desire. More importantly, even when we have nothing left to fear, it showcases the way in which we invent our own “painted devil[s]”. Macbeth is exactly this: a story of a man who releases fear into his world and infects the lives of those around him.

When imagination fails us, however, what are we left with? In characteristic fashion, the playwright gives us a clue. Macbeth’s “tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” speech lends us an insight into the essence of our humanity. Everything signifies nothing, in the words of a man who has no distance left to run. In view of this, we begin to realise that the play is largely about absence. The absence of children resonates throughout. To have no children signifies the death of ambition: as children fail Macbeth, Macbeth’s future fails. That he kills the king is a further “breach in nature”. It is to cancel love, mock duty, and hack down the tree of life. Herein lies the key to this new production, epitomised in the following quotation: “Now o’er the one half-world | Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse | The curtain’d sleep.”

In a post-apocalyptic wasteland, desolate and lifeless, our take on the play is influenced by the dramatic works of Samuel Beckett, as well as modern dystopian fiction, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. In the world we have created, Macbeth is king of nothing. That “Nature seems dead” murders any hope for the future. In echoing Adam and Eve’s pursuit of knowledge, he descends into a fallen world, wherein he finds the promise of immortality impossible to keep.

We hope you enjoy the show.

 

John Haidar, Director