6 days until the Macbeth premiere!

Macbeth is often called “the Scottish Play”, but the story is so universal in its meaning that it could take place anywhere. Or in any time, as set and costume designer Mark Thompson points out during a break from rehearsals. “There’s something timeless about it, it could be happening now. We’ve placed our production in a non-specific, post-Second World War time. It could be in the 60s, in the 70s, probably [with an] Eastern European feeling, but what we didn’t want to do is make it too specific.” While the costumes define the time or period this Macbeth takes place in, the set design also represents a psychological take on the story. “The set is a smashed piece of slate,” Thompson adds, “and there’s this sort of scarred forest in the background, with the sky falling into the forest. The sky is falling down. Natural order has been turned into chaos.” The interior scenes, on the other hand, almost have a “film noir” atmosphere, as the designer explains: “We don’t have big lumbering sets because we’re in a castle, in a corridor setting. There’s a bedroom that comes on, but it’s just a bed and a glass panel. It’s that feeling of people always being able to see what’s going on. Windows, fear of what’s going on in the dark—these are all psychological aspects of how the design came about.”

Another influence came from the work of photographer Diane Arbus, whose images of mentally dispossessed people inspired the look of the witches. “Early on, I showed [director Adrian Noble] the Diane Arbus book that had all these Down syndrome women that she’d photographed in the 70s,” Thompson says. “In a way, that was the starting point. And oddly, because most of the photos are done in black and white, and they’re often in woods, that influenced the overall design as well. It’s not a black and white production. It’s just drained of color, that how I would describe it. There is color, but it’s quite soft. It’s film noir, and the Cold War. After all, it’s a black, dark piece. It’s about black arts.”

This entry was posted by Philipp Brieler on Monday, October 15th, 2007 at 8:16 pm and is filed under New Production Countdown. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.