Stratford Festival 2025/Macbeth by William Shakespeare, directed by Robert Lepage in collaboration with Ex Machina, Avon Theatre, closes Nov. 2. Tickets here.
Fair is FOUL, and foul is FAIR….and then there is just plain FOUL.
Robert Lepage is one of Canada’s great men of theatre, but even great men can come a cropper.
Simply put, in Lepage’s Macbeth, the Sons of Anarchy meet Bates Motel.
What I have always admired about Lepage and Ex Machina, the company he founded, is their innovative mix of technology and theatre. Unfortunately, technology seems to have overtaken Macbeth and run roughshod over the production. The play itself has taken second place.
The Concept
It’s an interesting idea setting Macbeth within the milieu of biker gangs where, as Lepage points out in his program notes, a similar hierarchical rank and file structure exists as it did in Duncan’s kingdom in ancient Scotland.
In fact, Lepage believes that Macbeth can be set in any society or historical period where there is a despotic leader desperate to cling to power.
Falling off the Rails
Alas, this production of Macbeth is bad news from the very beginning, that is, if you’ve come to the theatre to see Shakespeare’s play.
Macbeth (Tom McCamus) and Banquo (Graham Abbey) are speaking in monotones. The voice of Macduff (Tom Rooney) is on one level. Lady Macbeth (Lucy Peacock) has barely any inflection in her speech.
Good grief, this otherwise minted-in-gold cast is actually boring.
I can only assume that their instructions were to talk in a naturalistic manner, but this is bloody Shakespeare. This is a play. This is drama. At times you can barely hear what the actors are saying. In our daily lives we talk with more expression than what’s happening on the stage.
Stratford has gifted Lepage with some of the finest actors in the country but what we have here is a bunch of old geezers on motorcycles and yes, there are motorcycles on the stage of the Avon Theatre, one of Lepage’s many gimmicks in this production.
Mercifully, we finally get a sense of energy and urgency when Malcolm (Austin Eckert) comes on the scene in the second act, but it is too little, too late.
The Production
It doesn’t help that the set is downright annoying.
Macbeth’s gang’s headquarters is a motel, and the cross-section that we see half rotates depending on which room is needed, the Macbeths’ bedroom or the front office.
So, we rotate partly to the left, and partly to the right, and partly to the left, and partly to the right, until you tell yourself that if that set rotates one more time you’re going to scream.
Providentially, another room rotates into view, and another. There is a games room and a banquet hall. This must be the biggest motel in the world.
The constantly shifting set is like a perpetual motion machine.
The Technology
If we don’t have any perceivable acting going on, and the set has so many moving parts as to be overkill, all we are left with are the toys and there are plenty of them.
There seems to be some sort of invisible screen that allows realistic moving pictures to suddenly appear, and that’s how the three witches spring up, as well as the legions of Banquo’s descendants.
There is however one thing that Lepage either forgot about or couldn’t solve.
The Avon Theatre has red exit signs, and they are either behind the screen or reflected onto the screen. Their 21st century reality certainly diminishes the impact of the magic.
The witches (Aidan deSalaiz, Paul Dunn & Anthony Palermo) are a rather sleazy, amorphous, transgender, drag, indeterminate trio who are, in fact, the most animated characters in the production. They, at least, are interesting albeit annoyingly oversexed.
Lady Macbeth does not walk in her sleepwalking scene. I don’t mind if a director attempts something different if it works, but I do have problems with what Lepage does here.
As Peacock drones on, barely audible, huddled in a corner of a tiny space, she is spied on by the Porter/motel manager (Maria Vacratsis) and the Paramedic (Paul Dunn) who are suddenly seen through the wall in a secret room with special lights and listening devices worthy of the Mossad.
This surprising pop-up visual is just another example of the Lepage/Ex Machina creativity, but it also eclipses one of the most important scenes in the play.
After killing Macbeth off stage, McDuff drags in behind his motorcycle an unbelievably realistic mangled corpse of McCamus worthy of Madame Tussauds. So gruesome is this image that it elicits a huge gasp of horror from the audience.
Lepage, however, creates graphic visuals for a reason.
This horribly mutilated body is not for shock and awe. Rather this one single image symbolizes the brutality and carnage that lie at the heart of biker culture and therein lies Lepage’s genius.
Then there are those astonishing motorcycles which the actors maneuver quite skilfully around that small Avon stage, and which barely emit any fumes. There is even a gas pump in one scene that’s used for a fill-up.
After a time, however, their endless comings and goings get a bit stale. Clearly, Lepage fell in love with them, and the motorcycles are the stars of the show.
The motorcycles also proved to be something of a distraction, and they occasionally took my attention away from the stage, not that that really mattered.
I found myself wondering were they real motorcycles, or modified motorcycles, or created motorcycles? At any rate, there sure were an army of them.
The Creative Team
Lepage is credited as designer, aided and abetted by his Ex Machina team, and collectively their immense imagination, invention, ingenuity and innovation have created a production of Macbeth that on a technical level will be talked about for many years. That cannot be denied.
Costume designer Michael Gianfrancesco has come up with the biker leather jackets, which, unfortunately, while looking very realistic, make the gangs all look the same.
He has costumed Lady Macbeth in a black leather clingy outfit accented with what looks like gold chain jewellery, so she certainly fits in. The banquet scene looks terrific. It is an absolutely realistic picture of a biker gang and their girlfriends.
Kim Purtell has designed the moody lighting, and John Gzowski the edgy sound. It all fits together.
Two Highlights of the Production, but for Different Reasons
There are two scenes that deserve special mention.
A standout is Macbeth on the second floor of the motel, the doors of the rooms along the wall behind him. He is sitting at the edge of the railing holding a serious looking gun, watching into the distance, looking for signs of the enemy.
It is quite an arresting sight, so realistic, so raw, so fraught with tension and it is Lepage at his best because it tells us in one perfect picture exactly what is going on.
The other, sadly, is downright laughable.
And this is how Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane — a solemn procession of slow-moving motorcycles, each with a small upright evergreen branch tied to the handlebars.
I can’t explain why it looks so silly, but it is belly laugh funny.
In Conclusion
While I acknowledge all the ingenious eye candy that Lepage and Ex Machina have loaded into this production, Macbeth is a huge disappointment because the play, the drama, the characters, the tragedy are lost.
Lepage has always been a hero of mine because of the way he experiments with theatre and technology, finding ways in which the two disciplines can enhance each other.
I just hope that Lepage remembers in his next venture, that theatre and technology are also equal partners.
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