I arrived from Australia on the Thursday the 27th of February,
and managed to
catch the last performance of Macbeth. Luckily I booked it via
the net before I left.
I feel very privileged to have seen this
play, one, as it is my favourite work of
Shakespeare, and two, because I am also a fan of Sean Bean's.
Maybe safer to
say I an admirer of his work.
Getting to the theatre was a bit bewildering, especially Leicester
Square. I'm
not used to being surrounded by that many people!!
The play was fantastic, very engrossing. There was a fair bit
of humour as well.
Samantha Bond was well cast to play Lady MacBeth with the right
mixture of
melodrama, power, greed and tragedy. The other cast members were
of equal
standing, especially Julian Glover as the slain monarch Duncan,
Barnaby Kay
who gave menace even without speaking as the ghost of Banquo and
Mark
Bazeley as MacDuff whose pain peirced hearts after his family
was callously
murdered . Due to the strength of the cast and the crew the production
was very
slick and sophisticated.
It goes without saying that Sean was fantastic. His energy moulded
him
into MacBeth. His power and presence made him very believable.
There was also
a quality of rawness which accompanied his descent into self destruction.
On
stage he is amazing, he had the audience eating out of the palm
of his hand.
Especially his scenes where he was half naked!!
Highlights for me were, the opening sequence where you didn't
have any
warning that the play was beginning (even people who had seen
the play before
were taken in (eg, the lady in the Sharpe's jumper in the row
in front of me
who had the seen the performance about five or more times); Macbeth's
initial
interaction with Lady Macbeth (where the sexual energy could have
been powering
the theatre and Leicester Square) and lastly, when Banquo's ghost
was haunting
Macbeth at the dinner, Macbeth swung between joviality with his
guests and raving
madness when Banquo appeared.
Sean's recognisable voice was starting to give out on him. It
was refreshing to
hear his accent as it gave Macbeth a uniqueness, a salt of the
earth perspective
as opposed to the usual toffee accents used for Shakespeare (not
that doesn't
work for other plays but it gave Macbeth an edge).
I really loved the play (aside from the fact that I lost one of
my contact lenses
just before intermission, so I had to squint and ended with one
blue eye and
one brown eye!). Macbeth has been one of my highlights in London.
I had hoped
to top the play off by getting a photo of Sean but alas it was
not to be.
A big thankyou to the very nice American? (or Canadian) lady who
took my photo
out the front of the theatre. Also a hello the two ladies I was
talking to after the
play when we were waiting for Sean to make an appearance (and
experiencing mild hypothermia). I wonder whether the lady who
had two sons, let her older boy try
and get an autograph by him pretending to cry!!! Private joke
, we were trying
to think of ways to entice Sean out of the theatre.
At least we kept ourselves amused, but as I am not familiar with
the train service
my experience was cut short but enjoyed nonetheless. I read that
Sean's
dressing room was under the metal grating (I didn't know this
at the time) on which I was standing so I guess I can always say
that Sean Bean's been underneath me!!!!!!!