“MACBETH” TO-NIGHT

Star (Christchurch), Volume XLIV, Issue 661, 14 January 1933, Page 25 (Supplement)

“MACBETH” TO-NIGHT

Dame Sybil Thorndike’s Great Role.

An enthusiastic audience witnessed the final performance of “ St Joan ” last night. Dame Sybil Thorndike and her English company will present at the Theatre Royal this evening Shakespeare’s Immortal tragedy, 44 Macbeth.” The cast is a strong one. All the members of the company who have been delighting large audiences all the week will appear. The “ Morning Herald,” writing of the opening night in Sydney of “Macbeth” wrote: "Dame Sybil Thorndike has the versatility of the really great actress. She entered so perfectly into the character of Shaw’s ‘ Saint Joan' that one could scarcely imagine her in another part. Yet her Medea was not only convincing in the highest degree, but also startlingly different from the Shavian heroine. As Lady Cicely in 4 Captain Brassbound’s Conversion,’ again, she scarcely seemed the same person who had appeared in ‘Medea* and ‘Saint Joan.’ One went to 4 Macbeth ’ on Saturday night with the keenest expectation to see what new strokes of powerful character-drawing the grim, fiery figure of Lady Macbeth would call forth. And expectation was not disappointed. This portrayal of Dame Sybil’s had boundless depth, so that one could go to the play again and again and always find in it some new aspect, some new significance. Her Lady Macbeth is human—not a fleshless melodramatic monster—and this very quality enables her to scale the heights of tragedy. For, as Dame Sybil herself has pointed out, the tragedy of the play lies in the clash of character and circumstances which lead to the epithets ‘ butcher' and 4 fiend-like * queen being bestowed on a couple who must have started life together with every promise of a noble career.

“ With the very first moment of her appearance, Lady Macbeth caught up her audience into a state of fascinated tension. The curtains parted to disclose her swooping quickly down a steep flight of stairs, the scarlet of her robes making weird contrast with the blackness of the great shadow she cast above her, hovering sombre and full of menace, like a bird of prey. The reading of Macbeth’s letter was a masterpiece of emotional suggestion, exerting its power through the subdued concentration of the speech, and through magnificently eloquent points of silence. 44 Mr Casson’s production of ‘Macbeth’ Is a brilliant example of modern ideas in stage setting. The essence of 4 Macbeth ' is the tumultuous rush of its action, through horror upon horror, to the final disaster. No other play of Shakespeare’s would suffer more from long halts between the scenes. So that —at least, in a theatre not equipped with a revolving stage—the setting must be simplified, to ensure quick changes. And it is just in this simplification that Mr Casson has proved himself a master.”