Light Thickens

Up to his tricks again, thought Peregrine, and stopped them.

‘Sorry, old boy,’ he said. ‘There’s an extra move from you here. Remember? Come down. The thanes wheel round behind you. Bloody Sergeant moves up and we’ll all focus on him for the speech. OK?’

The King raised a hand and slightly shook his head. ‘So sorry. Of course.’ He graciously complied. The Bloody Sergeant, facing front and determined to wring the last syllable from his one-speech part, embarked upon it with many pauses and gasps.

When it was over Peregrine said: ‘Dear boy, you are determined not to faint or not to gasp. You can’t quite manage it but you do your best. You keep going. Your voice fades out but you master it. You even manage your little joke, “As sparrows eagles or the hare the lion,” and we cut to: “But I am faint, my gashes cry for help.”’ You make a final effort. You salute. Your hand falls to your side and we see the blood on it. You are helped off. Don’t do so much, dear boy. Be! I’ll take you through it afterwards. On.’

The King returned magnificently to his place of vantage. Ross made an excitable entrance with news of the defeat of the faithless Cawdor. The King established his execution and the bestowal of his title upon Macbeth. Peregrine had cut the scene down to its bones. He made a few notes and went straight on to the witches again.

Now came the moment for the first witch and the long speech about the sailor to Aleppo gone. Then the dance. Legs bent. Faces distorted. Eyes. Tongues. It works, thought Peregrine. The drums and pipes. Offstage with retreating soldiers. Very ominous. Enter Macbeth and Banquo. Witches in a cluster, floor level. Motionless.

Macbeth was superb. The triumphant soldier – a glorious figure: ruddy, assured, glowing with his victories. Now, face to face with evil itself and hailed by his new title. The hidden dream suddenly made actual; the unwholesome pretence a tangible reality. He wrote to his wife and sent the letter ahead of his own arrival.

Enter the Lady. Maggie was still feeling her way with the part, but there were no doubts about her intention. She had deliberately faced the facts and made her choice, rejected the right and fiercely embraced the wrong. She now braced herself for the monstrous task of ‘screwing her husband to the sticking-point’, knowing very well that there was no substance in their previous talks although his morbidly vivid imagination gave them a nightmarish reality.

The play hurried on: the festive air, Macbeth’s piper, servants scurrying with dishes of food and flagons of wine, and all the time Macbeth was crumbling. The great barbaric chieftain who should outshine all the rest made dismal mistakes. He was not there to welcome the King, was not in his place now. His wife had to leave the feast, find him, tell him the King was asking for him, only to have him say he would proceed no further in the business and offer conventional reasons.

There was no time to lose. For the last assault she laid the plot before her husband (and the audience) – quickly, urgently and clearly. He caught fire, said he was ‘settled’ and committed himself to damnation.

Seyton, with the claymore, appeared in the shadows. He followed them off.

The lights were extinguished by a servant, leaving only the torch in a wall-bracket outside the King’s door. A pause during which the stealthy sounds of the night were established. Cricket and owl. The sudden crack of expanding wood. A ghostly figure, who would scarcely be seen when the lighting was finalized, appeared on the upper level, entered the King’s rooms, waited there for a heartbeat or two, re-entered and slipped away into the shadows. The Lady.

An inner door at ground level opened to admit Banquo and Fleance, and the exquisite little night scene followed.

Bruce Barrabell had a wonderful voice and he knew how to use it, which is not to say he turned on the Voice Beautiful. It was there, a gift of nature, an arrangement of vocal cords and resonators that stirred the blood in the listener. He looked up, and one knew it was at the night sky where husbandry was practised and the candles were all out. He felt the nervous, emaciated tension of the small hours and was startled by the appearance of Macbeth attended by the tall shadow of Seyton.

He says he dreamt of the three Sisters. Macbeth replies that he thinks not of them and then goes on, against every nerve in the listener’s body, to ask Banquo to have a little talk about the Sisters when he has time. Talk? What about? He goes on with sickening ineptitude to say the talk will ‘make honour’ for Banquo, who at once replies that as long as he loses none he will be ‘counselled’ and they say good night.

Peregrine thought: Right. That was right. And when Banquo and Fleance went off he clapped his hands softly, but not so softly that Banquo didn’t hear him.

Now Macbeth was alone. The ascent to the murder had begun. Up and up the steps, following the dagger that he knew was hallucination. A bell rings. ‘Hear it not, Duncan.’

Dougal was not firm on his lines. He started off without the book but depended more and more on the prompter, couldn’t pick it up, shouted ‘What!’, flew into a temper and finally started off again with his book in his hand.

‘I’m not ready,’ he shouted to Peregrine.

‘All right. Take it quietly and read.’

‘I’m not ready.’

Peregrine said: ‘All right, Dougal. Cut to the end of the speech and keep your hair on. Give your exit line and off.’

‘“Summons thee to heaven or to hell,”’ Dougal snapped, and stamped off through the mock-up exit at the top of the stair.

The Lady re-entered at stage level.

Maggie was word-perfect. She was flushed with wine, over-strung, ready to start at the slightest sound but with the iron will to rule herself and Macbeth. When his cue for re-entry came he was back inside his part. His return to stage level was all Peregrine hoped for.

‘I have done the deed. Didst thou not hear a voice?’

‘I heard the owl scream and the crickets cry. Did not you speak?’

‘When?’

‘Now.’

‘As I descended?’

‘Ay.’

‘Hark! Who lies i’ th’ second chamber?’

‘Donalbain.’

‘This is a sorry sight.’

‘A foolish thought, to say a sorry sight.’

She glances at him. He stands there, blood-bedabbled and speaks of sleep. She sees the two grooms’ daggers in his hands and is horrified. He refuses to return them. She takes them from him and climbs up to the room.

Macbeth is alone. The cosmic terrors of the play roll in like breakers. At the touch of his hands the multitudinous seas are incarnadined, making the green one red.

The Lady returns.

Maggie and Dougal had worked together on this scene and it was beginning to take shape. The characters were the absolute antitheses of each other: he, every nerve twanging, lost to everything but the nightmarish reality of murder, horrified by what he has done. She, self-disciplined, self-schooled, logical, aware of the frightful dangers of his unleashed imagination. ‘These deeds must not be thought after these ways: so, it will make us mad.’

She says a little water will clear them of the deed, and takes him off, God save the mark, to wash himself.

‘We’ll stop here,’ said Peregrine. ‘I’ve a lot of notes, but it’s shaping up well. Settle down please, everybody.’

They were in the theatre, the current piece having gone on tour. The stage was lit by working lights and the shrouded house waited, empty, expectant, for whatever was to be poured into it.

The assistant stage manager and his assistant shifted chairs on stage for the principals and the rest sat on the stairs. Peregrine laid his notes on the prompter’s table, switched on the lamp and sat down.

He took a minute or two, reading his notes and seeing they were in order.

‘It’s awfully stuffy in here,’ said Maggie suddenly. ‘Breathless, sort of. Does anybody else think so?’

‘The weather’s changed,’ said Dougal. ‘It’s got much warmer.’

Blondie said: ‘I hope it’s not a beastly thunderstorm.’

‘Why?’

‘They give me the willies.’

‘That comes well from a witch!’