"Macbeth' in London, violence everywhere

When is "enough" enough, in the theater?

You might ask that question after crawling out of a blood-soaked performance of Macbeth in London that would have scared even Shakespeare.

Don't get me wrong. The Trafalgar Studio's production provides an exciting, high-octane evening, with all the original's attendant thrills and chills, plus a manic James McAvoy (the movie star) in the title role and a spirited company speaking authentic "Scottish."

Still, at times, I thought I was watching a stage version of Zero Dark Thirty.

The world of Macbeth, as directed by Jamie Lloyd, is a gritty, bombed-out Scotland set some time in the future. Anarchy rules this bleak landscape. The United Kingdom has collapsed due to economic and environmental disasters, and it's now divided, each dying fiefdom fighting for its life. Moreover, this fractured land is traumatized by radical climate changes, which fill the stage with a fetid orange haze.

Witches in gas masks

McAvoy's Macbeth is a soldier returning from civil war, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, to discover a wife suffering equally from post-natal depression. Survival is all— hence, their ambitions to seize power over anything they can and hold on to it.

In this dystopian world, fair is indeed foul— and foul is even fouler. Macbeth and his retinue wear army fatigues, their faces crusted with dirt and blood, their fevered eyes ablaze with determination. The three witches wear army fatigues, too— and their faces and heads are covered in grotesque gas masks.

Lady Macbeth looks like a Black Sabbath Goth queen. On the eve of the murder of Duncan, Macbeth and his maniacal men engage in a wild party with beer cans popping.

As he fulfills the witches' dark prophesy, steeping himself deeper in blood, how does McAvoy's Macbeth show the requisite remorse and doubt that Shakespeare suggests? Director Lloyd has him drink the witches' brew and vomit it up, cup after cup.

Axes and machetes

In the banquet scene following Banquo's murder, guests wearing tattered, filthy clothes bang metal dishes and tin goblets, while Macbeth dances wildly on the table and then recoils, as the mangled ghost of Banquo breaks through the stage floor.

"I am in blood steeped so far," cries Macbeth. That's putting it mildly.

In the production's one darkly ironic moment, as the deafening soundtrack of thunder roars, a parade of people enter wearing plastic raincoats and carrying signs reading "Welcome to England's green and pleasant land" (the lyrics to the well-known hymn, "Jerusalem").

Then Birnham Wood finally comes to Dunsinane, and Macbeth's adversaries reveal themselves wielding axes, guns and machetes, their fierce faces smeared with war paint. The final battle between Macduff and Macbeth is a savage hand-to-hand combat, reminiscent of Iraqi war scenes dramatized in film.

"'Social conscience'

In his program notes, director Jamie Lloyd explains that he's trying to create a season of "politically charged power plays, all linked by a social conscience, which attempt to analyze the psychology of our age." His goal, he says, is to attract a new and young audience to his renovated theater, now called "Trafalgar Transformed."

Fair enough— and a good idea in theory. If we're concerned about a violent, terrorized, war-torn world, then, yes, let's say so in the theater, and let's say it to young audiences— the folks who matter for our future. If we're anxious about a planet traumatized by environmental crises, terrified by prophesies of climate and population changes, then let's say that. If we fear the return of tyrants like Idi Amin and Sadaam Hussein, let's say that, too.

But if, in doing so, our theater productions are violent and horrific to the point of sensational, aren't we, in fact, enticing and entertaining the audience with the very elements that frighten us?

Humor in Pulp Fiction

This issue of violence as entertainment has concerned me for years. Yes, I know: black comedy is "in"— in fact, the most popular genre in theater and film for the past two decades.

In Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, someone shoots someone else in the head by accident, the car interior is splattered with blood and brains— and the audience is convulsed with laughter.

In Martin McDonagh's The Lieutenant of Inishmore, an Irish Republican terrorist seeks revenge for the alleged murder of his cat, the stage is soon knee-deep in hacked-off limbs and other body parts— and the audience laughs uncontrollably.

All right, I get it "“ it's nouveau theater of the absurd. The joke is on us, and McDonagh is satirizing our appetite for violence on stage.

Still, the more violence we tolerate, the more inured to it we become.

Bosnian nightmare

Some serious dramas cry out against the violence of our times. Blasted is Sarah Kane's outcry against the Bosnian war, confronting its audience with almost nonstop rape, cannibalism and torture, not to mention the secretion of every conceivable bodily fluid. That barrage may be necessary to make her point, but it's an ordeal from which I still haven't recovered.

We playwrights and directors need to find another way to send a message about violence without exploiting it. Until we do, as MacDuff laments: "Bleed, bleed, poor country...."