Macbeth

The short review says that Titi adds one star, the child adds one star, and the glass slapping adds one star. Then a friend who feels the same pointed out that the original play is only worth one star. Haha. Indeed. I was quite upset after watching it at that time. Although I had enough time to change the train from the last train to half an hour earlier because it was less than nine o'clock at the end, I still couldn't say its advantages. A few days after watching it, I was no longer as excited (unhappy) as I was at that time. I recorded it calmly. In two days, I really forgot everything. The dividing line of the full spoiler is to talk about the advantages first. Yes, this version also has advantages~ 1. Big Titi. Titi acted too well. Although the director and the actors on the same stage created many difficulties, she burst into light when she had the opportunity. For this reason, I will definitely recommend this version. The most impressive place is also one of the few places in this version of the play that makes people feel the connection between Macbeth and his wife. I think it was completely made up by Titi: the monologue after the servant reported the death of Lady Macbeth and Macbeth said, "She's dead, she's dead sooner or later." In other versions, this part usually only expresses Macbeth's indifference to human nature and his helplessness towards life and death at this point in the story, but Titti gave it a particularly fragile and melancholy tone, which makes people feel Macbeth's deep loneliness and helplessness after Lady Macbeth's death. It's like a eulogy for Lady Macbeth, which is an emotion I have never experienced before. Their connection is much deeper than I imagined. 2. There is a wonderful arrangement. At the banquet after Banquo's death, because the script directly wrote Banquo's ghost, basically every version also has a real ghost. But this version didn't have a person. In other words, most of what we saw before was from Macbeth's perspective, but this version gives us Lady Macbeth's perspective, the guest's perspective. This made me feel a sense of sudden realization, and I very intuitively experienced the dislocation between Macbeth and his wife, that is, Macbeth saw Banquo, and Lady Macbeth thought he saw Duncan. You can even imagine Macbeth seeing Banquo and Duncan, and imagine Lady Macbeth gradually realizing that he had killed Banquo, which gave a lot of space. 3. The child who played all the children is very good, and the future is promising. 4. The stage design is quite good. The overall structure is a square white stage in the center, island-shaped, surrounded by audience seats on three sides, with a glass on the back. The ground behind the glass is still flush with the stage. It can be considered that the area behind the glass is also part of the stage. There are several scenes where characters hit the glass in the back, which is super scary. Lady Macbeth also hit the glass when she was carried away from the back after sleepwalking, which was particularly desperate. The music is also very good! So that's all the advantages. The annoying things about this version: 1. Cutting the bones. To say how short this version is, it's not. After all, Macbeth is not a long play, two hours is also okay. There are also many transition scenes in the original script, so there is room for cutting. But the problem with this version is not that it deleted a few scenes, but that every scene was deleted. Almost every scene was kept, and a little bit was deleted here and there. The fat was cut to thin, and the thin parts are still there. . The final feeling is that the mountains and valleys are filled with potholes. The two hours are pure rambling, and the director is always worried about not having enough time. He doesn't know what he is rushing or what he is being rushed by. For example, my favorite scene between Macduff and Malcolm was deleted in many versions. To be honest, I can understand it, but this version is not. It deleted most of it and left a little bit. As a result, Malcolm was excited and angry at the beginning. I really don't know why. 2. Die. I am so angry that I want to die when I write these two words. I am going to die. Macbeth is a very rare play in Shakespeare's plays that has no comedy elements. There is a reason for this, okay, brother? The director inserted two comedy sections, one large and one small, at two key moments in this play, and they were inserted at the wrong place, which cut off the breath of the whole play twice. The first one, also known as the most unforgivable one, is after the murder of Duncan, the monologue of the gatekeeper was turned into a stand-up comedy. From the form to the content, it is a real stand-up, interacting with the audience and "offending" the audience. It is a super long section. Most of this dialogue is newly written, the style is below average, and it is very embarrassingly long. It was so long that I sat there and wondered if this guy was a relative of the director. Later, I secretly looked up the actor who played the janitor, thinking that maybe he had done stand-up comedy before? But he didn't. Haha, he specifically said in the interview that I don't have a background in stand-up comedy. Well, at least he succeeded in playing a stand-up comedian. He said that this stand-up was inserted in this version to avoid the plot being too intense. May I ask? It's like doing aerobics, the heart rate just passed 100, and suddenly I was told to stop: Stop it, don't be too intense. Then it cooled down to 70. Why is this! I actually think that another problem with this stand-up is more serious, that is, it ruined the work in terms of form. In terms of form, it is a stand-up, five minutes long. The other 100 minutes are a Shakespeare play. This difference and proportion is as weird as a person growing a small fish fin. If it is bigger and richer, maybe it is qualified to be a fish-headed man? But now it is just a small mistake on a human body. The second comic effect is inserted before the duel between Macbeth and Macduff. I don't know why, no matter which version, this scene is not very good, and there are quite a lot of inexplicable treatments. In this version, Macbeth keeps slapping Macduff's face. It is quite funny to say it is a provocation or a tease, but just like that monologue is super long, the slaps are endless. You think it's over, and he comes again... (Of course, I have nothing to complain about watching Big Titty slap people.) As you can imagine, the tension has dropped again. 3. Roles and actors. This version can be said to be very unfriendly to beginners. One of the reasons is the scheduling of the actors. Strictly speaking, except for Macbeth himself, all actors played more than two roles (Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff have a scene, and it is not clear whether this role was given to this actor, or this plot was given to Lady Macbeth). Everyone was in casual clothes/did not change clothes. There was almost no difference in the performance of the actors between the roles. For example, the child who played all the children mentioned above played Banquo's son, Macduff's son, the prophetic child, and it was once suspected that he played the phantom of Lady Macbeth's son. He even played a general who challenged Macbeth in a duel at the end, but Macbeth broke his neck. It was a bit scary. I am quite curious whether new audiences will confuse the roles? The actors cannot be said to be bad, but they cannot be said to be good either. Malcolm is a strange choice, and he does not look like a ruler. Duncan is vague, Banquo seems to be too shrewd, and Macduff is not mentioned. The gatekeeper forcibly shows his armpit hair. As for Lady Macbeth, there is nothing wrong with her acting skills. She has worked with Titi many times, but there is almost no tension between the two. This version of Lady Macbeth is very much like a tool person, and her mental changes are also very stiff and broken. I think it may be the director's problem. Features that are not considered disadvantages: Camera and headphones. This version may be the one with the biggest difference in viewing experience between theater audiences and theater audiences in ntlive. Several times I felt that this was a movie, not a stage play. The actors' sense of finding the camera (or more likely the other way around) is too strong, and several overhead shots from directly above also deepen this feeling. Close-ups, close-ups, close-ups, tiring. Each audience member at the scene wore a headset, and the music and human voices at the scene were all input into the headset through the microphone. The interview was very ridiculous, saying that in order to let the audience experience the situation of PTSD when the soldiers returned from the battlefield, they would hear the sounds lingering in Macbeth's mind in the headphones, such as roars, voices or other sounds. For example, when Banquo mentioned swallows building nests, the audience would hear the swallows whispering in the headphones. The gatekeeper jumped down from the audience and said, "Are you wearing headphones?" Do you pay to listen to radio dramas? This is the beginning of his stand-up comedy, and it is also the only funny joke.

250301 Beilei's new official on-site photo Although I fell asleep in a bloody mist without warning during the most mysterious "Second Questioning of the Witch's Prophecy" segment, and this version omitted too many "details", the fast-forward narrative made many plots too jumpy, and the buffering of character creation and temperament transformation was a bit abrupt, which may not be very friendly to the audience who are exposed to the story for the first time, but I still recommend it. This version has an interesting design: a pure white and minimalist rectangular four-sided stage + a surrounding glass corridor (the illuminated jungle after the regicide at the end can be called vibrant), Macbeth and Lady Macbeth will stare at the camera and confess their feelings to the viewer (mainly the former), the three witches are only foggy but not physical, and there are frequent long shots superimposed on close-up shots (for example: Macbeth watches the princes discuss the escape route, Banquo's son bangs on the glass door in the background when he is plotting to kill the king, and in the glass corridor behind Macbeth are Macduff's abandoned wife and son imagining the future)... The actors can be said to have basically performed well. Although the plot is fast-forwarded and the characterization is intermittent, DT and Jumbo still try their best to show the mentality of the characters at each stage. The actors' performance without physical objects is still credible, but the moment when Macbeth and Banquo met the three witches on the road at the beginning is a bit out of place because their daggers look too much like wands.

The most puzzling thing is the moment when Macbeth turned into shrimp rice. His entanglement time was too short. It seemed that after being provoked by Lady Macbeth with a few words such as "You don't love me" and "Are you a man?", he immediately "become a man and do what a man should do". It feels that his remaining moral bottom line is less than the whiteness of his gray shirt; I don't know if it's because I am too familiar with the actors. When Macbeth pretended to be relaxed and showed some superior humor, I felt that the shadow of DT ran out, which was a bit out of the play. The design of the crown being directly crowned by Lady Macbeth is very consistent with the plot. In addition, the way this version of Macbeth expressed respect was to look down at the camera and prostrate himself on the white stage, which had a strong visual impact in various senses.

The part about Lady Macbeth losing her son is mentioned in many places in the plot (although, like the development of the plot, many of them are mentioned by "discussions of bystanders in the plot"), but there is not much space to show her attitude towards her heirs. Jumbo did show in fragments such as "I used to breastfeed and wished to break my neck for ambition to take away my nipple" and Macbeth hugged her and said "You should have a son with your courage", but the story is after all from Macbeth's perspective. In addition to the part about the three witches showing the kings of later generations passing down from generation to generation, he also said something like "According to the prophecy, I am now plotting to murder the monarch for the descendants of Banquo". For Lady Macbeth, I think there is still more room for narration. In addition, when Jumbo shows "pretending to be calm", he will deliberately increase the volume and the amplitude of the movements, which is a bit exaggerated for me, but it can still be explained in the plot. The gatekeeper was responsible for the funny part again and teased several audience members. I asked a friend who has seen many versions, and it turns out that "each version has a gatekeeper to adjust the atmosphere, allowing people to take a breath in the plot. The plot usually contains satire and allusions to the plot, and the proportion depends on the director." This version is similar in functionality, but with more comedy elements. It may be hoped that the heavy atmosphere of the opening scene of bloody man Macbeth washing his hands and wiping his face (his neck was not wiped clean!) and the ending of Macbeth lying in a pool of scarlet blood will be diluted to a certain extent. Regarding the sound performance of headphone performances. Although the venue of Beilei has a musty smell of old hair combing particles and mixed color sponges mixed with garbage, its sound seems to be better than that of the Guangju Experimental Theater (and Beilei's curtain does not have a wrinkle on the upper right corner). The sound balance of this one is good, and there will be no "deliberately adjusting the whole play to be very loud in order to accommodate the actors' whispering dialogues." The whispering in the scenes of supernatural and illness seems to be made into surround sound.

Most of the time, there are no problems with the translation, which is of course related to my unfamiliarity with Shakespeare's English. But there is one part that is really out of place. At the end, Macbeth threatened his personal guards to speak up quickly, saying something like "If you... I will hang up your photo." The original film flashed by and I didn't hear it clearly, but Macbeth was not breaking the fourth wall or stealing the job of the janitor at this moment. What was he saying...? I'll take some time to compare it with the Uncle Nine version I watched 6 years ago. It's a pity that the offline screening rights of Uncle Nine's version have not been returned.

This is the third version of Macbeth I have watched. The other two versions are movie versions, all of which are great, but this one... Shakespeare himself would definitely curse: Shabby. After Duncan was murdered, the monologue of the gatekeeper of hell was designed as a stand-up comedy, and dirty jokes were added... It directly cut the whole atmosphere in half... And the last scene of Macbeth's death, Macbeth provoked Macduff, just like a high-drinking thug provoking a cold-blooded boss, bending over and gently slapping his chest? ? ? What is the point of adding this comedy? ? ? The director is simply crazy. The heroine is of black descent. Her eyes and body movements did not show her interpretation of greed and desire at all. The Nobel temperament that Macbeth's queen should have did not exist. When she didn't speak, she looked like a fierce woman chasing a goose at the village entrance. When she spoke, her voice was slightly hoarse and her accent was "up and down". West End of London? It's about the same as the West Coast of the United States. The most outrageous thing is the two lords under Macbeth, pure black? ? ? ? Scotland in the 11th century, black? Or lord? ? Are they hired as actors because they are cheap? ? Except for the male lead Macbeth and the old king Duncan, the others are nothing, and their performances are just like when I ran to the podium in high school to reenact the rooftop scene of "Infernal Affairs". I still prefer "Spider's Nest" adapted by Akira Kurosawa. Although "Macbeth" died from arrows at the end, it did not prevent this movie from being a god in terms of acting, scheduling, and atmosphere rendering. The one played by Fassbender is also good, although it is very stream-of-consciousness, but it is too delicate, cold and desolate.

DTT's version of Macbeth is essentially an immersive sound play. The scene is a three-sided stage, and the audience is given headphones. Behind the stage without the audience seats is a recording studio with a sliding glass wall for the actors to enter and exit. Some parts look quite strange and changeable (in a positive sense) in combination with the performance. When it is not needed, the curtain is lowered and the recording studio/performance space disappears, creating a desolate feeling that there is no creature breathing here except Macbeth played by DTT. It is difficult to restore the sound effects of the scene during the screening, but the limited experience can also detect that a lot of spatial processing has been done (it is indeed the biggest technical gimmick of this version). Based on this, I think it may be more restored to watch it online with headphones and lossless sound quality resources compared to offline screenings. (I tried it when watching the trailer, and it's indeed novel, but for me it kind of broke the "safe distance" of watching a show, and I don't really like this feeling.) From another perspective, this official photo was shot very cinematically, with a lot of close-ups, repeated switching of shots, and even panoramic bird's-eye views that were impossible to see on the scene, etc. I once suspected that this version of Macbeth might have been born for filming visually, because even if you were sitting in the front row on the scene, it would probably be difficult to have such a comprehensive effect (this also reduces the probability of sensory overload caused by the strong impact of the audio-visual combination...) This kind of shooting technique is a complete fan-pleasing drama for dtt, but it also exposes the fact that the acting skills of the actors other than him are really not good enough (including Cush Jumbo, uh uh uh... I originally quite liked her performance in The Good Fight, it seems that the character setting is greater than the actor's ability 😅). Given that the script has been cut down to less than two hours, it would be better to just delete Lady Macbeth, Macduff, Malcolm and other characters who don't seem to be that good and just show me "Macbeth: Reminiscences of a Ghost". In that case, the innovation of this version in expanding the audience's sensory space on a technical level would be appropriate.

The whole play is less than two hours long, and the script was cut into pieces to catch up with the schedule. The dialogues that advance the plot were changed to narration, and a lot of monologues that show the psychological changes of the characters were also cut. As a result, every time Macbeth's scenes came up, my mind seemed to automatically broadcast "Due to time constraints, let's fast forward to xxx". Judging from the script alone, this violent change has a certain degree of damage to the integrity of the characters. For example, not long after the opening, before entering the viewing state, Macbeth has already turned against him; the hesitation to dig out Duncan's heart is also a bit perfunctory. But given the popularity of Shakespeare's plays in the UK, the West End audiences who are familiar with the plot may welcome such treatment, after all, they don't have to worry about catching the last train. "Director, you are bold to delete, and mature audiences will fill in the blanks on their own."

It is commendable that DTT has withstood the test. Every monologue can make my eyes, which are hazy due to slight sleepiness, refocus and bring my wandering thoughts back into the inner world of the character. His Macbeth has a kind of calm madness, without exaggerated expressions, and the inner drama of the character is told in a leisurely manner. It's all because of the dagger that Macbeth holds at the beginning, which looks like a magic wand at first glance. In the end, Macbeth finally found that he was trapped by the prophecy. I had a hallucination that I learned that Voldemort was a half-blood, and Barty Crouch, whose faith collapsed, was a little cute (?)

The stage design is definitely a highlight. Although I have a certain degree of understanding of the ingenuity of the minimalist stage design in the West District, this version still "rolls" to a new height. A small square stage with light and shadow vocal effects is enough to perfectly restore all the scenes in the play. If the live band and vocal accompaniment are already standard, the transparent curtain wall behind the square stage is the biggest plus. The transparent curtain wall and the space behind it form the depth of the stage, greatly increasing the operability of the stage scheduling. The mumbling of the "ghosts behind" must be very eerie and creepy.

The only complaint is that the camera always likes to shoot close to my face during the monologue, causing me to jump back and forth between being dissatisfied with the camera weakening the sense of presence and being obsessed with DTT's looks.

As for DTT's point that he is the same in every role, I think that for Shakespeare's plays, which have been performed to death, as long as the direction of the imagination is not outrageous and the logic is self-consistent, it is acceptable. It is better to say that Shakespeare's plays are about showing the actor's own characteristics.