Macbeth: a performance that transcended time

Rashi Bunny *

Ratan Thiyam

The evening euphoria, the enthusiastic greetings and the decked-up queue that snaked many folds from the entrance of the Rabindra Natya Mandir Auditorium till the nearby famous Siddhi Vinayak Temple in Mumbai, spoke of the place Ratan Thiyam holds in the hearts of mumbaikars!

The occasion was the inauguration of the first edition of the Rashtriya Maharang Parishad : a National Theatre Summit, coinciding with the seventh edition of Rashtriya Vasant Natyotsav, the annual theatre festival of the University of Mumbai's Academy of Theatre Arts and offered an ensemble of theatre, music, dance, folk performances and a seminar on a variety of issues concerning theatre in India. Supported by National School of Drama, New Delhi, WZCC Udaipur, Cultural Affairs, Govt. of Maharashtra & ZEE entertainment, this week long event was launched with the world premiere of MACBETH, designed & directed by Ratan Thiyam, latest spectacle from the Chorus Repertory, Imphal.

The auditorium was dresed up in flowers and colors appropriately for what was awaited, not just by the rasikas of mumbai but the glittering 'whos' who' of Indian Theatre fraternity. There were the likes of Vijaya Mehta, B. Jayshree, Neelam Mansingh Choudhary, Gowri Ramnarayan, Ram Gopal Bajaj, Amol Palekar, Kamlakar Sontakke, Rudraprasad Sengupta, Waman Kendre, Usha Ganguli, Arjun Deo Charan, Rajinder Nath, Himani Shivpuri, Afsar Hussain, Pratima Kulkarni, Sanjana Kapoor and the young enthusiasts and the new students of Theatre patiently waiting for the magic that was to unfold that night! What can be more appropriate and joyously insightful than to begin a national theatre festival in Mumbai with the spectacle of Ratan Thiyam's latest production MACBETH!

Macbeth written by William Shakespeare is considered one of his darkest and most powerful tragedies. Set in Scotland, the play dramatizes the corrosive psychological and political effects produced when evil is chosen as a way to fulfil the ambition for power. Believed to have been written between 1603 and 1607, Macbeth is Shakespeare's shortest tragedy, and tells the story of a brave Scottish general named Macbeth who receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the throne for himself. He is then wrecked with guilt and paranoia, and he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler as he is forced to commit more and more murders to protect him self from enmity and suspicion. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of arrogance, madness and death. Despite the common belief amongst thespians that the play is cursed, it has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comic books, and other media across the globe!

Ratan Thiyam's interpretation of the play doesn't really begin from one single point or character or dialogue, it encapsulates an atmosphere of entanglement, created through the swaying wild creepers of a dark forest. The prophecies of the witches reaching Macbeth through the deep eerie sound effects and the green blue mesh of lights in an alive forest flora, set the tone for the play. The theme of ambition, greed, hunger for power and the consequential bloodshed is as if seething through the entire production and design. The costume, jewelry and accessories seem to arrive from a conglomeration of different tribal roots underlining the savagery of the play.

The blank stage without any set actually makes the world a stage metaphorically and the play can be geographically located anywhere in the world. The barren vastness of the empty stage adds to an unexplainable grandeur to the play and its royal characters. But most remarkably the light design, that makes an audience yearn for illumination, thus playing the vital role of creating the darkness that this Shakespeare's tragedy embodies. The sound design is not just Ratan Thiyam's signature different percussion sets and deep gongs but majestically creates again, a mesh of different vibrational energies, almost reverberating to demands of the emotional peaks of different scenes. And thus the audio-visual journey of the characters leads the audience through another psychological plane while we watch the actors perform.

Coming to actors, Chorus Repertory boasts of some of the finest, trained and talented actors of the country. A couple of dozen actors overwhelmed the 1200 odd audience members, not including the few hundreds outside the auditorium watching the play on a large screen. The way Ratan Thiyam has succeeded in capturing the inner dark hungers of human gone astray through this intense game play of energies vis-à-vis body, voice, intonations, movement and pure manifestation of desire, is unheard of. Particularly, the scenes with the witches, the messenger delivering larger-than-life scroll for lady Macbeth, the killing of Duncan and the interaction of Macbeth with his wife were not just captivating but moments of shear magic where one can feel one's innards broil with muck and bile. Such is the effect of the composition and dramatic design of this psychological onslaught called Macbeth.

Yet the most thwarting, hair-raising and numbing scene is when Macbeth and other almost cadaveric human forms are brought on wheel chairs by an army of nurses. Here the directorial interpretation of Macbeth as a disease in society actually takes a physical consequence on the stage. The unquenchable desires for power would lead to unfathomed destruction, starting first as a toxic seed in a conniving mind and then infecting and corrupting not only a person or family but also the entire society. This scene is an exemplary demonstration of how a poetic text written by a genius from 1600s is transported into the current condition of the whole world through a sensitive and poignant dramatic performance.

Shakespeare would have been the last playwright to imagine Macbeth being performed in Manipuri and in a form and manner as prodigious and awe-inspiring as the one that just premiered. But if he ever got to witness this nerve-chilling tremendous performance on stage, he would not be just a proud playwright but would feel indebted to Ratan Thiyam for bringing the graveness of all types of violence to people in such an incredulous way.

As an artist, researcher and keen observer of Mr. Thiyam's theatre for more than a decade, I have personally vouched for the fact that his plays make one move closer to one's purpose of life. They broaden one's horizons of understanding the world and perception of reality. They make one become more sensitive and responsible as human beings. This performance not only exults the dire necessity of Peace in the world but also transcends barriers of space and time. Here the personal tragedy of one couple that happened eons ago is presented as a threat to entire humanity! More than just an artistic engagement, this production is a huge step towards evolution of human consciousness and contribution to meaningful theatre. Our Salutations!!