3 mei

Anne en ik gaan samen drie dagen naar Londen zodra haar examens afgelopen zijn. We mogen elk een dag het programma bepalen (en de derde dag vullen we samen). Anne wil graag naar Macbeth in The Globe. Op 5 juni gaan we daarheen en we hebben gereserveerd als 'groundling', wat betekent dat we met ons hoofd door dat zwarte zeil moeten gaan staan om verdoemden in de hel te symboliseren. ZOMG!

Dit zegt de Financial Times erover (de cursiveringen zijn van mij):

'Hell is ever present in Lucy Bailey’s evocative new staging of Macbeth. Katrina Lindsay’s set draws on Gustav Doré’s illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy. A huge black canopy spreads across the Globe courtyard, dotted with holes through which spectators slot their heads, like the damned souls trapped in the lowest circle of Hell. As prologue to the play, bloody bodies surge up through the canopy and writhe in agony, while the weird sisters busy themselves below – plenty of hurly-burly beneath the blanket. (waar beginnen we aan?!)
It is playful, original and powerful. Bailey’s staging seizes on the circular nature of the Globe to suggest that we are all trapped in this hellish tale of spiralling ambition. We notice how often the word “hell” occurs in the text; hell, for Macbeth, is without and within. The witches, malevolent, gleeful hags, lurk constantly, ready to forge the links between Macbeth’s teeming mind, a bloodied, brutal Scotland and the inferno below.
This is a gory telling. The traitorous Thane of Cawdor is left, mangled, on stage as Macbeth assumes his mantle. The colours are black, slate-grey and maroon; bagpipes wail. This Scotland is a bleak and war-torn place: ambition and death walk hand-in-hand.
Little wonder then that the Macbeths’ thoughts turn so quickly to murder. And these Macbeths are young, hot-headed and hot-blooded, stripping off as they plan regicide. Elliot Cowan is a strapping, handsome Macbeth: he brings vigour and charisma to the part but also conveys the torment of an unquiet mind. Laura Rogers starts less strongly but is deeply affecting in the sleepwalking scene.
The production is flecked with imaginative touches: Macbeth and Fleance pretending to fight to the death, for instance, or the witches crowning the groundlings to torment Macbeth. Not all of them work – the ghost of Banquo emerging from the banquet is a bit Hammer Horror. More importantly, what eludes the staging is a real chill and a sense of the horror closing in round Macbeth, and the pace sags dangerously in the second half.
But still, this brooding production launches the new season strongly. And no one will forget Frank Scantori’s grotesque porter, who brings a new meaning to the phrase “comic relief”. (****)'