Toll sieht er mit dem Bart aus.

Danke jinkizu für deine Mühe , aber von dieser Retold Verfilmung hab ich die DVD. Ich meine die Roundhouse Macbeth Verfilmung von 2001 mit Anthony Sherman als Macbeth .. die habe ich nicht mehr auf DVD aufgetrieben ...

Ich hab versucht, sie abzustellen ( ging aber trotz deaktivieren nicht)- meine Russischkenntnisse halten sich in Grenzen...
Ach, Lucas - ich hatte heute ein traumatisches Déjà-vu Erlebnis, da kam einiges wieder hoch
Vorsicht, heavy Sherlock spoiler:

About Shakespeare Shakespeare's plays Macbeth Past productions

In focus: Gregory Doran 1999

Gregory Doran's gripping modern-dress production featured Antony Sher and Harriet Walter as the Macbeths.


BRILLIANTLY STAGED

Gregory Doran’s 1999 fast paced production was generally thought to be the best staged since Trevor Nunn's Macbeth in 1976, which also had no interval. Staging it in the 400-seater Swan Theatre gave the discovery process more scope: "its naturally stripped-back look allows the language to create the world and gives the audience the creepy sense of being enfolded in the Macbeth household.” Gregory Doran interview with Paul Taylor, The Independent, 10 November 1999.


COMPELLING COUPLE

Antony Sher and Harriet Walter were compelling as the central couple whose marital and psychological disintegration propelled the tragedy.

“Present fears are less than horrible imaginings” Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 3

At the beginning of rehearsals, the company were asked to explore their deepest fears. Eerie foreboding was also felt by the audience from the opening scene, when, after a deafening thunderclap, they were plunged into darkness and the witches began their incantations. An unnerving drumbeat, composed by Adrian Lee, punctuated the action and heightened the nightmarish atmosphere.


MODERN SETTING

The modern setting was non-specific although the khaki-clad witches and soldiers were evocative of the 1990's Balkan Conflict. Doran was more interested in conveying an impression of brutality and horror.


CREEPY EFFECTS

The production had a strong visual sense as a result of Gregory Doran’s staging, Stephen Brimson Lewis’ design and the lighting of Tim Mitchell, with its stark contrast between light and dark. There were some genuinely creepy moments when faceless apparitions bulged through the fake back wall and Birnam Wood really did seem to come to Dunsinane in a gloomy swirl.


MACBETH FILM

Featuring the original cast, including Antony Sher and Harriet Walter, in 2001 the production was filmed at the Roundhouse in London. It was shot in a gritty style using the edgy techniques of fly-on-the-wall documentaries.


ADAPTING MACBETH

In an interview for the film Gregory Doran explained the rationale behind the adaptation: “Macbeth is, in many ways, the most filmic of Shakespeare’s plays with its short, quick-fire scenes and its hurtling, dynamic momentum. In the film I tried to capture its raw energy and dangerous intimacy.”


FILM CLIP

See Antony Sher performing the Act 5 Scene 5 speech “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow” (Illuminations Media Ltd). The Macbeth 2001 DVD is available from our shop.

In the gallery below, you can explore more images from the Macbeth film as well as key extracts from the script.


CAST AND CREATIVES

COMPANY

Swan Theatre, 1999

Jeff Alexander - Soldier

Richard Armitage - Angus

Diana Beck – Lady Macduff, Weird Sister

Ken Bones - Banquo

Glenn Chapman – Macbeth’s Servant

Nigel Cooke - Macduff

John Dougall - Malcolm

Noma Dumezweni – Weird Sister

Graeme Flynn - Young Macduff (alt)

Jonathan Gumbley – Fleance (alt)

Polly Kemp – Gentlewoman, Weird Sister

John Killoran – Bloody Captain, Menteith

Trevor Martin – Doctor, Old Man

Guy Moore - Lennox

Stephen Noonan – Porter, Seyton

Joseph O'Conor - Duncan

Lee Rice – Fleance (alt)

Antony Sher - Macbeth

Harriet Walter – Lady Macbeth

Paul Webster - Ross

Robert Whitelock – Donalbain, Young Siward

Gareth Williams – Young Macduff (alt)



CREATIVES



Director - Gregory Doran

Designer - Stephen Brimson Lewis

Lighting designer -Tim Mitchell

Music - Adrian Lee

Movement - Sian Williams

Fight arranger - Terry King


The RSC's archive is held at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust. You can visit the Library and Archives there to look at production related information, including photos, videos of shows and stage management documents:

Shakespeare Centre Library and Archive homepage

You can search the RSC catalogue here:

RSC performance database

In addition to performances at the Swan, Macbeth in 2000 toured to:
Brighton Theatre Royal from 24th January (7 perfs);
Bath Theatre Royal from 1st February (7 perfs);
The Globe, Tokyo, Japan from 24th March (18 perfs);
The Young Vic, London from 10th April (48 perfs);
Long Wharf Theatre, New Haven, USA from 15th June (13 perfs), closing on 25th June.

Macbeth (RSC)

In 1999, Richard Armitage joined the Royal Shakespeare Company, and was cast as Angus in Macbeth.

Gregory Doran’s 1999 production of Macbeth formed part of the RSC Millennium season, and opened at The Swan, Stratford on Avon, to great critical acclaim in November 1999. The production was immediately spoken of as the finest since Trevor Nunn’s production, starring Ian McKellen, in 1976.

Antony Sher’s Macbeth and Harriet Walter’s Lady Macbeth are seen as landmark interpretations. Sher emphasises the black humour of the role of Macbeth, and the brutal courage of the character, while managing to show that the warped ambition is not far from the surface. He said of the role, “Macbeth is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Every step you take is dangerous because it invites you to be over the top, or silly or hysterical.” [1] Walter’s Lady Macbeth is taut as a bowstring, driven by a mixture of pent-up neurosis and eroticism.

Set in an unspecified militaristic state, this studio production emphasised the energy and pace of the play. In the theatre it ran without an interval, enabling the relentless unravelling of the tragedy to take its full effect. The set was spare, the costumes modern/timeless, the colour palette monochrome, the action played out in brooding twilight.

Richard Armitage plays Angus, one of Duncan’s lords. Duncan’s loyal men are tough soldiers for whom battle is meat and drink. Angus speaks when Macbeth and Banquo are greeted on their return from victory, and later speaks again, as one of the group of lords determined to work for Macbeth’s fall. The rest of the time, he is a presence in many of the other scenes, in attendance on Duncan, and later, Macbeth. He is a fighting man, who looks and feels more at home in filthy, battle-stained fatigues than in dress uniform.

After the Stratford run, the production went on a national and international tour.


Macbeth on TV/DVD

The original cast of the 1999 production was reassembled for the film, which was shot in that legendary venue The Roundhouse, in 2000 empty and awaiting refurbishment. The production was reconceived in gritty documentary-style for the camera, giving the impression, at times, of an undercover report from near the front line of a Balkan war. The venue is one of the stars of the film, its labyrinthine corridors and circular main space enabling the camera to make snaking, circular panning shots around the grouped figures.

Director Gregory Doran said, “Macbeth is, in many ways, the most filmic of Shakespeare’s plays, with its short, quick-fire scenes and its hurtling, dynamic momentum. In the film, I tried to capture its raw energy and dangerous intimacy.” [2]

The film version was shown on Channel 4 on New Year’s Day 2001.


Links

Royal Shakespeare Company: information about this production and about the stage history of Macbeth
Illuminations Media (production company for the filmed version)
Review of the London run at the Young Vic
Article in The Guardian Travel section by Antony Sher on the tour to Japan
Review of the US tour production from the New York Times
BFI Screenonline summary of filmed versions of Macbeth

Sources

[1] Interview in The Independent, quoted on the RSC website
[2] Quoted on the website of Illuminations, the production company for Macbeth.

Macbeth : Playing Angus

Richard Armitage said of his role as Angus, "I went to Japan with the RSC, in a production of Macbeth. I had a seven line role in the play.” [1]

He has described his early theatre work after leaving LAMDA as ‘spear-carrying’ at the RSC and the Birmingham Rep. The part of Angus is not a large one, but it is a speaking part. In this production, the tough, battle-hardened warriors who surround first Duncan, then Macbeth (before turning against him), are a strong physical presence throughout the play, almost a chorus or even at times a macho corps de ballet. Not a spear in sight here.

Angus actually has more than seven lines in the play. We first see him in Act 1 scene 2, with Rosse, who comes with the news of victory over King Duncan’s enemies, including the traitorous Thane of Cawdor. Angus and Rosse are sent by the King to greet Macbeth with the news that he is now Thane of Cawdor.

Angus: “We are sent / To give thee from thy royal master thanks; / Only to herald thee into his sight / Not pay thee” [2]

We see him alert and wary, all piercing eyes in a camouflaged, blackened face, every inch the loyal soldier, under orders to his king. We see him with Banquo, observing Macbeth as he processes this news, and compares it to the prophesy of the three Weird Sisters.

Angus: “ … now does he feel his title / Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe / Upon a dwarfish thief.” [3]

Thereafter, we see him in the background (but his presence unmistakable) in a number of scenes, and, just before the final battle, he speaks again, in a scene where he plots with his fellow officers to link up with Malcolm’s invading force of English soldiers.

The production went on tour after its run at Stratford. Several years later, Richard Armitage remembered, “[In] Tokyo … fans outside the stage door [were] waiting for me with seven lines to sign their Star Wars memorabilia … which was just insane, absolutely mad, but – great!” [4]

With characteristic modesty, Richard Armitage talks down his contribution to this production of Macbeth, and marvels at his impact on the Star Wars fans in Tokyo. It is for his admirers to find out for themselves that he formed part of one of the great ensemble casts of recent years, in one of the legendary productions of Macbeth of our time, now on permanent record as an acclaimed film version on DVD.

Sources

[1] 'vivid' magazine, spring 2005
[2] Macbeth Act 1 Sc 3: Angus.
[3] Macbeth Act 5 Sc 2: Angus.
[4] Richard Armitage: interview with Matthew Wright, BBC Radio 26th March 2005

The Internet Theater Magazine of Reviews, Features, Annotated Listings

Macbeth
By Lizzie Loveridge

The Scottish play is problematic and of the dozen or so productions I have seen of Macbeth only a few satisfied fully. Here from the Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by the man who is tipped to be the next incumbent of the RSC head chair, Gregory Doran, is a darkly innovative, sensory and excitingly staged, Macbeth.

The auditorium at the Young Vic, one of London's reliable studio venues, is flooded with overly bright spotlights as the audience trudge in. This is so that when the play commences in absolute darkness, we can see nothing of the three weird sisters, only hear their strange cries. Our hearing too is overexposed, deafened by the crashing of thunder in the most dramatic opening of the play. So we are sensorily disorientated. Macbeth (Antony Sher) and Banquo (Ken Bones) are carried in, shoulder high, sweating, their faces blackened from the fire of battle. Above the stage two Japanese Taiko drummers set a frenetic pace and soldiers rush about underlining this production's vibrant physicality.

At two hours ten minutes without a break this is one of the shortest ever adaptations of Macbeth. The length gives the play considerable intensity as any scene which drags, has been expunged. The downside of this is that there is little time to establish Macbeth's character as a noble and honourable soldier before he becomes the victim of his own ambition. Sher's Macbeth barely pauses to consider what he should do before murdering Duncan. Even as he prostrates himself before the king, who is a guest in his house, his intention is evil. An old white haired man, tall, clad in medieval robes like an archbishop, with a movingly sonorous voice, Duncan (Trevor Martin), is saintly. Sher, on the other hand struts, stocky in modern military battledress, or square shouldered tuxedo, full of sinister intent. Sher's speed of decision also gives Lady Macbeth (tall and stately Harriet Walter) a less prominently nasty role.

Doran's staging is outstanding. Banquo's murder again takes place in darkness lit only by torches, one flash giving us the briefest glimpse, a single frightening image of a man being stabbed. In the banquet scene, the ghosts are Sher's own demons as he stares into space. Later we see the form of eerie faces pushing through a vinyl sheet, like partially shaped sculptures. The banquet scene segues into the heath as the three weird sisters spring onstage, up turning the table hanging off the cross bars and squirming in a dance of pelvic thrusts.

Stephen Brimson Lewis's set has a dramatic drawbridge which descends from a rear wall of old and broken stone which allows a memorable entrance for Lady Macbeth. There is a parapet, like a balcony, at either side a metal spiral staircase and high overhead, a crumpled canopy of steel grey gauze masks the machinery.

The night I saw Macbeth, many of the audience were schooldchildren, for whom Macbeth is routinely the first introduction to Shakespeare's plays. This rapid, physical production had them silenced and attentive. They will remember the thunderous staging but one can't help wondering if they had time to assimilate any of Shakespeare's beautiful verse.

MACBETH
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Gregory Doran
Starring: Antony Sher, Harriet Walter
With: Diane Beck, Noma Dumezweni, Polly Kemp, Trevor Martin, John Dougall, Robert Whitelock, Ken Bones, Christopher Olivares-Chandler, Edward Brown, Nigel Cooke, Diane Beck, Alistair Strong, Ben Inigo-Jones, Paul Webster, Guy Moore, Richard Armitage, John Killoran, Stephen Noonan, Glenn Chapman, John Kane, Jeff Alexander, Polly Kemp,
Set Design: Stephen Brimson-Lewis
Lighting Design: Tim Mitchell
Sound Design: John A Leonard for Aura
Music composed and directed by Adrian Lee
Movement: Sn Williams
Fights: Terry King
Running time: Two hours ten minutes with no interval
Box Office: 020 7928 6363
A Royal Shakespeare Company Production at the Young Vic, The Cut, Waterloo, London SE1 To 3rd June 2000. Sold out but 12 day tickets are available every day, released at noon, queuing starts at 10 am. Also try ticket agencies.

Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 5th May 2000 performance

THEATER; A Season of Sound and Fury, Signifying Plenty

By MATT WOLFJUNE 18, 2000

ANTONY SHER is the first to acknowledge that the majority of ''Macbeth'' productions don't work, almost as if the supernatural component to Shakespeare's play were casting a hex on it in performance. Added to that was his first exposure to the text, as a schoolboy in his native South Africa, where, the actor said, ''It was taught appallingly, so I had no real experience of it.''

It is easy, then, to imagine the mixture of excitement and trepidation with which Mr. Sher and his director, Gregory Doran, approached the play when they chose to revive it for the Royal Shakespeare Company in November. The production went on to be praised as the company's best in decades -- that is to say, since Judi Dench and Ian McKellen played Shakespeare's murderous couple for the director Trevor Nunn in 1976.

The current staging ended a sellout London run on June 3 and has transferred intact to the Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, where it is being presented through next Sunday as part of that city's annual International Festival of Arts and Ideas.

''Macbeth'' devotees may rightly feel sated at the moment. The Royal Shakespeare version is arriving hot on the heels of a Broadway staging that stars Kelsey Grammer and is directed by Terry Hands, who coincidentally happens to be both a longtime colleague of Mr. Sher's and a former artistic director of the R.S.C. Mr. Grammer opened in the play on Thursday at the Music Box Theater, with Diane Venora as Lady Macbeth. (For ultra-fans of the play, the Gorilla Repertory Theater Company has revived its version, which winds up a series of free performances outdoors at Fort Tryon Park in northern Manhattan on Thursday night and Saturday night.)

Broadway sees relatively few productions of ''Macbeth,'' even if Mr. Grammer did previously inherit the role for six weeks in 1980 at Lincoln Center. That was before the actor's work in the television hits ''Cheers'' and ''Frasier,'' when, not long out of the Juilliard School, he was cast as Lennox and then stepped in for the leading actor, Philip Anglim, in a production at the Vivian Beaumont Theater directed by Sarah Caldwell.

In London, on the other hand, and in Europe, where the classics are regularly produced, ''Macbeth'' appears often enough for Mr. Hands to estimate that he has seen the play some 40 times.

The present Royal Shakespeare production raised expectations in England because it marked Mr. Sher's first foray into Shakespeare's so-called big four (''Hamlet,'' ''Lear'' and ''Othello'' complete the quartet). Mr. Sher has been admired over time as Richard III and Leontes, among other Shakespearean roles that include Lear's Fool, but never as one of the playwright's tragic heroes.

''It was a hangover from being this little white Jewish South African,'' Mr. Sher said recently. ''For a long time, I wasn't sure whether classical establishment British theater was an area I was allowed to go into; I'd always had a slight sense of being a trespasser.''

Eventually, Mr. Sher recalled, he acquired the courage to tackle the role, emboldened by a celebrated Zulu ''Macbeth'' in Johannesburg in 1995 -- a staging, he said, that ''worked so superbly.'' (The show, ''Umabatha: The Zulu Macbeth,'' was seen in New York at the 1997 Lincoln Center Festival.) Mr. Sher also returned to the script. ''I reread the play,'' he said, ''and was astonished to find that it reads magnificently. You sense Shakespeare sitting up through several days and nights with this thing pouring out of him.''

Both Mr. Sher, 50, and his director, Mr. Doran, 40, spoke in separate conversations of having ''an appointment'' with the play. The two share a house in North London, and have been partners for 13 years.

''By the time we came to do 'Macbeth,' '' Mr. Sher said, ''we needed to do it, and we needed to do it in a certain way.'' But during the seven weeks of rehearsal, the staging actually evolved away from the Jacobean setting first envisioned and toward something more abstract and placeless.''

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''We were trying to distill the play down to an essence,'' said Mr. Doran, a former actor who has previously directed Mr. Sher in ''Titus Andronicus,'' ''Cyrano de Bergerac'' and ''The Winter's Tale.'' This stripping away of ''Macbeth'' meant divesting the play of all extraneous pomp (and, a risk with this play, camp) so that its restless, infernal heart could be laid bare. The three witches, for example, first emerge out of total darkness and later usurp the banquet scene -- startlingly so.

WE don't believe in witches anymore,'' Mr. Doran said, ''but we do believe in fear. What we did with 'Macbeth' was to begin not from the supernatural but from a much more primal basis.''

The result somehow creates the feeling of a new play, said Harriet Walter, whose Lady Macbeth has earned her equal praise with Mr. Sher. ''The modern look of the armies,'' the actress said, ''the almost Kosovan atmosphere -- from the kick-off it becomes a kind of modern play, which allows the audience to follow the psychological tension, like a thriller, in a very immediate way.''

And unlike some versions of ''Macbeth,'' which seem to focus on the title role and merely sketch in the parts around him, this one, Mr. Doran said, is a genuine partnership because ''we had to get Lady Macbeth right before anything.'' Ms. Walter's willowy elegance -- her cool eerily giving way as the play's chaos ensues -- complements the bluff, squat braggadocio of Mr. Sher's warrior-Macbeth.

Adrian Noble, artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare, has spoken of a possible transfer of the production to Broadway, where Mr. Sher made his debut in 1997 in the Pam Gems play ''Stanley,'' for which he received a Tony nomination.

But the simultaneous presence of the version involving Mr. Grammer and Mr. Hands now makes that unlikely. ''There certainly wouldn't be two places on Broadway for the play,'' Mr. Sher said.

For his part, Mr. Grammer, 45, said: ''I don't want to set things up for an embattled comparison. Ours is homegrown, and I'm very excited about the idea of an all-American cast. We may as well put ours out there and let people either shoot it down or applaud it.'' The production, a limited run through July 30, is being presented by the SFX Theatrical Group and Emanuel Azenberg.

'''The only similarity,'' said Mr. Hands, 59, who saw Mr. Doran's production at its final performance in Stratford (''Maybe he was just coming to pick up a few clues,'' Mr. Doran said jokingly), ''is that ours also is done without an interval.''

''Look,'' Mr. Hands added, ''I'm delighted. The more Shakespeare we have in North America the better.''

Matt Wolf is the London theater critic for Variety and a regular writer on the arts from Europe.

THEATER REVIEW; Fierce Kindred Spirits, Burning for a Throne

By BEN BRANTLEYJUNE 22, 2000

Their glittering, too-open eyes are scary, so luminous that you expect them to glow in the dark. But while the usual witches and ghosts are in attendance, it is something less supernatural that gives this power couple's gaze its intensity in the Royal Shakespeare Company's thrilling new production of ''Macbeth,'' which runs through Sunday at the Long Wharf Theater here.

Come now, you've seen the look that beams so unnervingly from the faces of Antony Sher and Harriet Walter, the show's splendid stars, and if you're a New Yorker, you encounter it daily. It's a ravenous, lusty look that even the most sycophantic smile can't camouflage. Stronger than any sex drive, it is pure, simple ambition, and these Macbeths are positively drunk on it.

Without making the obvious bids for topical relevance, the director, Gregory Doran, has shaped Shakespeare's tale of regicide and its discontents into a harrowing and disturbingly funny parable for the dawn of the 21st century. This ''Macbeth,'' which bears scant resemblance to the stodgy oratorical exercise now on Broadway under the same name, finds its taking-off point in its protagonist's declaration that he has ''only vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other. . . .''

Though Macbeth famously never finishes that sentence, this adrenaline-pumping interpretation amply fills in the blank, carefully and vigorously charting the landscape where leaping ambition finally falls. That's the realm of madness of course, but I have never seen a ''Macbeth'' that makes such a specific and convincing case for its leading lord and lady's increasingly demented behavior as a natural outgrowth of their characters as we first see them.

Be careful what you wish for. Truman Capote, a devoted chronicler of people with warping appetites, spent his life accumulating evidence of the wisdom of that warning. Not that these Macbeths have any choice in the matter. Their compulsiveness and their bottomless need to reach the throne are all too evident long before King Duncan (Trevor Martin) is slain.

Take, for example, the moment when Macbeth -- freshly covered with laurels from his triumphs on the battlefield -- appears at an assembly where the king announces his successor. Mr. Sher puffs himself like a nominee on Oscar night, clearly in anticipation of hearing his own name. And the winner is, alas, the king's son, Malcolm. For a sharp second, this Macbeth appears to have had the wind knocked out of him. But then, like many an Oscar loser, he is the first to lead the applause with a hearty smile.

In like manner, when we first see Ms. Walter's Lady Macbeth, reading aloud a letter from her husband, she runs through the text with a breathless sexual urgency; when she comes to the word ''king,'' in reference to the witches' prophecies for her husband, she can't even speak it at first, she's so excited. Ooo baby, we're almost there.

Mr. Sher and Ms. Walter are much celebrated for their vital portraiture on the London stage. (Mr. Sher, the better known in the States, appeared indelibly on Broadway several seasons ago in ''Stanley.'') The intensity they bring to the murderous thane and his wife isn't surprising in itself. What is, is how they are able to begin at an improbable fever pitch and then keep growing hotter, moving imaginatively forward when you think they have reached a dead end.

The entire production, in New Haven as part of the International Festival of Arts and Ideas, sustains a martial urgency that only rarely slackens, underscored with propulsive drum-driven music by Adrian Lee. In keeping with the suffocating nighttime imagery woven throughout the tragedy, the evening begins in utter darkness.

The chanting weird sisters (Diane Beck, Noma Dumezweni, Polly Kemp) who begin the play are at first only seen, not heard: whispering, as it were, in our ears. The first visual image is of soldiers and of a bloodied man hurled into their midst as if by a catapult. The image is apt, since the news this man bears, of Macbeth's bloody successes on the field, sets off a missile that won't self-destruct until the evening's end, and perhaps not even then.

Mr. Sher's Macbeth is introduced as a revved-up conquering hero, borne on the shoulders of his comrades, instead of making the customary entrance with no one but Banquo (Ken Bones). This Macbeth is the image of the popular soldier: rowdy, virile, collegial.

He's a brusque, blunt-spoken type, and if you asked him, he would probably tell you he is not by nature introspective. (He treats his horror-conjuring imagination as an unwanted guest.) What makes him stand out from the crowd is his energy, which burns a shade too bright for comfort.

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Ms. Walter's designing Lady is, correspondingly, a bundle of electromagnetic nerves, and it makes sense that when these two reunite, a statewide blackout follows. While some interpretations present Lady Macbeth as the prime motivator of the crimes to come, this production makes it clear that the spouses share, er, strong common interests.

Like many couples they have a seesaw relationship of support: when one's down, the other's up. That is, until the final acts, when they both come spectacularly unglued.

Mr. Doran and his team ensure that their production is not only a portrait of a marriage. Whereas I often leave a ''Macbeth'' hard pressed to remember who played whom in the supporting cast, this version offers a gallery of cleanly and specifically defined characters, not all of whom are immune to the plague of o'ervaulting ambition.

Mr. Bones's tough, shrewd Banquo, for example, clearly has his own mighty thirst for regal glory, a trait made to figure ominously in the evening's final tableau. And in that usually tedious scene in which the exiled Malcolm (John Dougall) and Macduff (a Sam Shepard-like Nigel Cooke) discuss the traits required for kingship, you get the idea that the passive, pure Malcolm doesn't really have what it takes.

Stephen Brimson Lewis's set designs and Tim Mitchell's lighting conspire to create a world in which a Grand Guignol darkness dominates and the fantasy of majesty glows with ecclesiastic mystery. Simple props are used to resonant poetic effect: a child's pacifier, military medals and, particularly, the king's crown. Notice also the use of Macduff's dagger in the climactic fight with Macbeth.

There are a few elements that feel overdone. Making the drunken porter an audience-baiting comic in the manner of the M.C. from ''Cabaret'' breaks the play's rhythm in unwelcome ways, though Stephen Noonan handles the part expertly. And Mr. Sher, whose Macbeth later assumes a gangsterish menace that recalls Bob Hoskins at his most splenetic, may be a shade too bogus in his rhetorical lamentations after the body of Duncan is discovered.

These are very small sins. In the big moments this ''Macbeth'' delivers grandly. Both the sleepwalking scene, rendered as an autistic frenzy by Ms. Walter, and the ''tomorrow and tomorrow'' monologue, to which Mr. Sher brings a simple, all-flattening nihilism, have the painful, grotesque immediacy of lanced blisters. Even more impressive, you are always aware of the chain of emotional logic that has brought these two to this jagged point.

The evening's boldest moment, both its darkest and its brightest, comes when Macbeth and his Lady, weary with the burdens of monarchy and murder, agree that all they really need is a good night's sleep. Sleep? The very word sends them into paroxysms of laughter that fleetingly confirm the couple's bond as kindred souls. Maintaining power, as any C.E.O. or magazine editor will tell you, is a full-time job. There's no rest for the supersuccessful.

MACBETH

By William Shakespeare; directed by Gregory Doran; sets by Stephen Brimson Lewis; lighting by Tim Mitchell; music composed and directed by Adrian Lee; movement by Sian Williams; fights by Terry King; sound by John A. Leonard for Aura; assistant director, Jonathan Munby; company voice work by Andrew Wade, Neil Swain and Charmian Hoare; production manager, Stuart Gibbons; costume supervisor, Stephanie Arditti; company and stage manager, Martyn Sergent; deputy stage manager, Harry Teale; assistant stage manager, Fiona H. Mott. The Royal Shakespeare Company presented by the International Festival of Arts and Ideas. At the Long Wharf Theater, New Haven.

WITH: Antony Sher (Macbeth), Harriet Walter (Lady Macbeth), Nigel Cooke (Macduff), Diane Beck (Lady Macduff and Weird Sister), John Dougall (Malcolm), Jeff Alexander (Second Soldier), Richard Armitage (Angus), Ken Bones (Banquo), Glenn Chapman (Macbeth's Servant), Noma Dumezweni (Weird Sister), John Kane (Doctor and Old Man), Polly Kemp (Weird sister and Gentlewoman), John Killoran (Captain and Menteth), Trevor Martin (Duncan), Guy Moore (Lennox), Stephen Noonan (Porter, Seyton and First Soldier), , Paul Webster (Ross) and Robert Whitelock (Donalbain and Young Seyward).