Last night I went to see the National Theatre’s production of Macbeth. It has been described as “the worst Shakespeare production at the NT for at least a decade” (see a roundup of reviews here) – and, having now seen it for myself, it’s got me to thinking.
The National Theatre has perhaps the highest profile of any single theatrical institution in the UK – the clue is in the name. That exceptional profile has implications: for programming, for casting, for creative decisions. The NT has a role to play in leading the cultural conversation in this country: in reaching very large audiences (even larger now that NT Live is so popular and frequent); in responding to the temperature and nature of the times we live in; in providing a mirror in which the UK, in all its fantastic diversity, can see itself.
Given the canon-oriented history of the NT, revivals of the work of Shakespeare and other dead white guys from the past seem inevitable. Such revivals can, potentially, be worthwhile: as someone who studies the canonical plays of men who died so long before Shakespeare that in comparison Will’s stuff is practically British New Writing, I do believe that, at least in part, these plays are revived because they are really rather good. The other part of that equation, though – one that it is crucial to be aware of – is that these plays almost always centre the stories of white men, who are almost always able-bodied, almost always elite, and almost always what might now be called heterosexual.[1] In tragedy, that means inviting audiences to invest in the unfortunate and sorrowful plight of elite straight white men, the single most privileged demographic in the modern world. Given the frequency with which these plays are revived, audiences are repeatedly asked to consider the suffering subject as, conversely, the kind of human who is structurally favoured by Western society to experience the least suffering.
I am not suggesting that straight white guys don’t suffer, or that their suffering is illegitimate, or in other ways not worthwhile to consider or portray. I am suggesting, though, that people who aren’t straight white guys suffer a lot too, in similar ways and in different ways, and often as a direct result of those occupying categories of privilege (straight, cis, white, male, able-bodied, elite) – but culture doesn’t like to give that suffering much of a spotlight, certainly not in the rarefied realms of high art of which the theatrical canon is a part.[2] And, furthermore, what I’m suggesting is that the overproduction of canonical plays that centre these stories has a role to play in culturally encoding how we think about different kinds of people.
If you’re suspicious about this idea of cultural encoding, think about how the US (and, more broadly, Western) media obsess over the precarious mental health of white terrorists versus how they respond to terrorists who are people of colour; very rarely do those reports invite readers and viewers to consider the mitigating factors of the terrorists’ mental state, their upbringing, and their social isolation (except, of course, where it is couched in an often spurious investigation of the ways they have been ‘radicalised’ by Islam). Or, if you want a pop-cultural example, consider how one of the biggest TV shows in the world, Game of Thrones – famous for killing off principal characters often perceived as tacitly invulnerable in other shows – has managed to murder the majority of the characters played by people of colour (many of whom are women) while simultaneously managing to keep so many white men alive, and how this happened because the show is more interested in investing audiences in white characters than it is people of colour.
In any case, the point is: the plays of the canon do not simply get revived as frequently as they do because they’re great art. They get revived because culture favours the stories of the elite straight white men at their centre, and because we continue to revive these plays, the culture continues to favour those stories. And, to rub salt into the wounds of the vast proportion of the population that are not elite straight white men, very often revivals are justified solely on the basis that their stories are universal. They’re relevant to everybody, which in practice is a claim predicated on the idea that whiteness, straightness, maleness, and elite class privilege are default and infinitely relatable, that everyone can look to a tragic hero occupying those categories and unfailingly recognise themselves.
So if the National Theatre, which has a duty to represent all of the UK on its stage, is going to insist on taking up space, resources, and taxpayer subsidy in again trotting out a play by a long dead playwright that attempts to arouse our pity and fear in the lamentable fall of an elite white man, then it needs to have a bloody good reason to do so. That play needs to urgently speak to the contemporary moment. The choices the creative team make need to consider this, and that includes casting. Otherwise, the question must be asked: what else could this space, these resources, and this taxpayer subsidy have been used on? Think of the new, unheard stories the National could have given a spotlight to.
As the review round-up above quickly indicates, the current production of Macbeth does not speak to the UK in 2018. Though it is notionally diverse in its casting (across vectors of gender, race, and disability), it is curious that the eponymous lead somehow managed to remain an RP-accented, white, heterosexual man. In this case, it was independent-school-and-Oxford-educated Rory Kinnear, who has garnered high praise for previous NT revivals of Shakespeare (Hamlet in 2010 and Iago in 2013). Kinnear is a formidable performer, for sure, but the sheer arbitrariness of almost all the creative choices around him left a distinct impression that the production was a half-assed apology for asking audiences to indulge yet another privileged straight white man while he makes his claim to a further slice of the cultural pie that the National have already fed him on multiple occasions. I kept thinking how the brilliant Kevin Harvey, playing Banquo, would have done just as good a job as Kinnear. So would Anne-Marie Duff, playing Lady Macbeth, for that matter. Their casting as the lead would have also been an invitation to think about this endlessly performed play and its themes of ambition, greed, fate, and guilt, a little differently.
Those who feel it is important for the canon and its Great White Men to remain unsullied by women and people of colour need not fear. Someone will be performing those plays somewhere (and probably not very far away – Shakespeare’s Globe? The Bridge Theatre? The Almeida? The Donmar? And, of course, the RSC!) At any rate, it is safe to say that meaty roles for straight white men aren’t going to be in short supply any time soon. But at the National, where they have a platform to innovate and a responsibility to a diverse population, let someone else have a go at Macbeth, Hamlet, and Lear for once. Otherwise give the canon a rest, if only for a while, and let other voices be heard.
[1] Don’t @ me #1: Othello. At best it is the exception that proves the rule. Even so, many productions place a spotlight on Iago rather than Othello. Plus, white men (and women) continued to black up to play the lead role (rather than casting a person of colour) well into the twentieth century, a fact that the National continue to not really be very ashamed of.
[2] Don’t @ me #2: yes, Greek tragedy often centres the suffering of women. When Shakespeare was writing, tragic suffering was typically embodied by the suffering woman. But just because there are greater roles for women in Greek tragedy does not mean it is the feminist alternative to early modern dramatists. The women in those plays are almost always elite, and as the recent ‘Black Achilles’ controversy surrounding the BBC’s Troy: Fall of a City showed, there is an on-going assumption that the characters that populate Greek myth are unquestionably white. Anyway, Greek tragedy takes second place (at least) to Shakespeare in the UK theatrical canon, in terms of numbers of productions; the surge of revivals in the last few years is a recent phenomenon.
