The Scottish Play

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,

Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,

To the last syllable of recorded time;

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools

The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury

Signifying nothing.

There are moments in performances, sometimes, which are so beautiful, so wonderful, they make attending the performance worthwhile really on that moment alone. In the fall I heard the Berlin Orchestra play a chord in a Mahler symphony which was quite simply the most beautiful single chord I have ever heard an orchestra play. Everything about it was sublime. I'm not a much of a Mahler fan, and the rest of the 80-minute symphony left little impression, but man that was one f-ing beautiful chord.

Patrick Stewart's "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquoy in Rupert Gould's Chichester Festival Theatre production currently playing at BAM inspired the same reaction from me. The grief, the fatigue, the pain of Macbeth were all evident as Patrick Stewart just so-slightly shook while taking a few simple steps downstage. And, as in all great moments in art, it was universal. It took me beyond the production, into my life, into the nature of life itself. Of course it doesn't hurt that that is one of Shakespeare's best moments already.

I found much of the rest of the production a little incomprehensible, and not in that I-don't-get-Shakespeare kind of way. The production was set in a vaguely 30's fascist bleached-yet-still-dirty world, yet Lady Macduff appeared to be dressed in Eileen Fisher as well as had wandered into the wrong play by way of Brideshead Revisited. Shortly before she and her family were massacred Hostel-style she wondered why this was happening to her, and I couldn't have agreed more. Lady you were in the wrong castle.

Similarly, Banquo gets offed in a moving train which as staged reminded me of the opening of Music Man (He's a what? He's a what?) which isn't a good thing in Shakespeare.

Oddly, I enjoyed the one aspect of the production most critics are singling out as out of place - the Weird Sisters, who are being criticized as "rapping" and other unsightly acts. I however thought their scenes were entirely enjoyable, and don't think that speaking in rhythm is necessarily rap, ahem. There was a sort of Nuns in an Orgy bit that is also getting people's knickers in a twist; my god, we're talking about the Three Witches, they can do whatever they want. The scene of them conjuring the voices of spirits was thrilling and genuinely creepy.

Afterwards my companions and I went to a warehouse/loft party in Greenpoint where I learned it is impossible to talk about Shakespeare while dancing to Kylie Minogue.