Macbeth ends with
regime change. A foreign army (England) helps to kill a tyrant and installs a
new King, Malcolm. But then what? Could the transfer of power really be so
smooth? Would the foreign army simply melt away, or would it need to stay to
manage the transition to the new power? How much do we know about the new
leader – the oddly empty character Malcolm – anyway? These were the questions
that occurred to Scottish playwright David Greig when he saw a number of
productions of the Scottish play in 2004. Dunsinane is his response. We start
with the English under General Siward defeating Macbeth at Dunsinane:
immediately our own certainties crumble, as we have a revisionist version of
Macbeth’s demise and his wife, the Lady Gruach, turns out to be alive. The
bluff certainties of Siward, which are fine in combat, quickly fall apart in this
new territory of clan warfare, treachery and spells. Imprisonment, suicide,
torture and infanticide follow. Malcolm understands this world, the English do
not: conflict, Malcolm explains, is the natural state of things, peace an
illusory, momentary calm sea. Greig’s play crystallises the issues of recent
British adventures abroad, principally in Iraq and Afghanistan; and it is
apposite too in the light of any ideas that, rid of Gaddafi, Libya will turn
dutifully to the Western model. Attention is focussed on the bewildered and
brutalised English squaddies, and the chief perspective is that of Siward,
holding on as long as possible to Blairite sense of mission. The play did not seem to me entirely
consistent: the squaddie humour seemed formulaic, and the ending did not quite
have the climactic feel it was looking for: hard to find a climax to a scenario
that is all to do with grinding on in a sense of ever greater futility. However,
the entire production was gripping. Powerful performances by Jonny Phillips (Siward)
and Siobhan Redmond (Gruach) brought out the bare poetry of Grieg’s script. A
welcome repeat on Radio 3’s Sunday drama slot.
