Macbeth

With a high school student struggling through the text, we found two stageplay versions on film, this one with Jeremy Brett (RIP, Sherlock Holmes) and Piper Laurie, and the McKellen/Dench version.

I have seen three ways to film a stageplay. (1) Put up a few cameras with an audience present (never works). (2) Take a cast used to performing before an audience and reblock for cameras and shoot with no audience (this version). (3) Forget audience, block and perform entirely for film (McKellen/Dench).

So this Brett/Laurie version features actors who project as though they must entertain people 100 feet away, and they move through a paragraph of lines as one would truly read a paragraph. Well enough.

But the McKellen/Dench is much more gripping, despite a minimalist set. Lines and characters were omitted for the sake of an overall vision. Characters stopped dead in mid-paragraph for effect. I'll never remember who Ross was in the Brett; I'll remember Ross/Porter in the McKellen. No spoiler here, but in the two versions one sees radically different Lady Macbeths -- not merely in execution but in conception. The Dench Macbeth being absolutely thrilling.

This Brett/Laurie, however, tracks Shakespeare. So the high school student should begin here. Then move on to the McKellen/Dench.

I agree that it is one of the worst versions of Macbeth ever made. Perhaps the worst. Brett overacts and Laurie is just ludicrous. The one good feature is the choreography for the three Witches. I had to preview this for inclusion in a college curriculum. All of us in the small audience (admittedly of English teachers) were laughing hysterically by the middle of the film. I am a strong admirer of Jeremy Brett, though even as Sherlock Holmes, he sometimes was over the top. His performance here is embarrassing. The Trevor Nunn video with Dench and McKellan is by far the best Macbeth ever put on film. I first saw it in the 1980's and have never forgotten it. Now if only some producer would pay to have Patrick Stewart's recent Chichester Macbeth on DVD, we would have two great productions to enjoy.

The Bard versions of Shakespeare's plays are filmed on a mostly bare wooden stage without an audience, and this one is no exception. However, using fog (dry ice), fire, and the swirling draperies of the witches (which vaguely resemble multicolored moss), this production creates an atmosphere suitable for Macbeth.

If there is nothing extraordinary about it, there is nothing sub-standard about it either. The acting is uniformly professional, and even those choices that might seem questionable, such as Piper Laurie's cold-blooded, sometimes detached Lady Macbeth, can certainly find support in the text.

Jeremy Brett is as emotional as Laurie is emotionless. His is a compelling, ultimately believable portrait of a good man gone almost completely bad.

The witches, who appear with their familiars and are young and attractive, give an interesting spin to the play's "Fair is foul and foul is fair."

Jeremy Bret gives a great, eccentric performance in this performance of Shakespere's classic play. The locations are all on stage, so the sets are not fancy. Still, the acting more than makes up for it and the action scenes are well done as well. Any fan of the play cannot go wrong with this performance.

It sounded so promising. Jeremy Brett in the title role, with Piper Laurie as Lady M and Simon MacCorkindale as Macduff. So far, so good.

That's where it stops. They are all dreadful. Very sad to say it, but who on earth allowed this mistake out into the wide world? I'm curious since there's ample evidence that Brett and Laurie at least are capable of performances of more depth and less posturing and declaiming than this. Was it then their director's fault? It's tempting to think so. MacCorkindale - well, he's adequate I suppose but by the time Macduff gets going it is far too late for this production.

I'm afraid I watched it once and it has been stuck on my video shelf covered with dust ever since. Maybe I'll give it another go someday. But not until the memory of being bored stiff by it recedes.