Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Superstars Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga headline Sam Gold’s confounding, curiously blasé production of MACBETH

• By drediman
• April 30, 2022
• No Comments

This week at the Longacre Theatre, the highly anticipated revival of Macbeth arrived on the Great White Way, marking the opening of the final entry of the rollercoaster 2021-2022 Broadway season. With film stars Daniel Craig and Ruth Negga as the lethally ambitious Mr. and Mrs. Macbeth, the production was all but guaranteed to be one of the season’s hot tickets, and it is.

The production is helmed by director Sam Gold, who is no stranger to Shakespeare, having directed fascinating productions of Othello (at New York Theatre Workshop, also with Daniel Craig), Hamlet (at the Public Theater, starring Oscar Isaac), and an underrated King Lear (on Broadway with the great Glenda Jackson). His deconstructionist, decidedly “downtown” aesthetic continues to be on full display in his revival of “The Scottish Play”. But instead of illuminating the play with its self-referential antics (which break the fourth wall from time to time), the distracted and distracting staging seems indicate that the director doesn’t trust the play to do its job. That is, to tell a story. Unfortunately, the result is a curiously flat reading of the Bard’s excessively dark tragedy, one that’s curiously blasé and consistently confounding.

I don’t fault the cast, which – in addition to the headliners – is comprised of some rather fine and intelligent stage actors (e.g., Maria Dizzia, Amber Gray, Michael Patrick Thornton, Paul Lazard). They appear to be following orders from Mr. Gold, who has apparently instructed them to deliver intentionally inert performances, as if to seem that they’re too cool for the play. It’s a shame about Mr. Gold’s bizarre directorial choices because Craig and Negga are actually quite good. In the the title role, the superstar ex-Bond gives a solid classical performance that’s both muscular and haunted. Better yet is Negga, who imbues her Lady Macbeth with an electricity and urgency that injects much needed vitality and sex appeal into this limp revival.

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MACBETH
Broadway, Play
Longacre Theatre
2 hours, 30 minutes (with one intermission)
Through July 10