On Canada's Top Stage, Macbeth and Annie Are Talking to Americans
But once we arrived at the Stratford Festival, situated among the rolling plains of southwestern Ontario, the gloves came off. Though the season was planned well before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, this year's productions at the country's (and likely the continent's) largest nonprofit theater seemed to be sending a message. The message was clearest in the three gripping Shakespeare productions I saw during a six-day, seven-show visit. But 'Annie,' no less than Lady Macbeth, had something to say to Canada's neighbor to the south.
Until experiencing those Shakespeares in quick succession here, I had never deeply absorbed how so many of the canonical plays are set in motion by the same chaotic figure: a man temperamentally unsuited to the wise use of great power. In 'Macbeth' he is the quick-rising warrior whose wobbly personality (and overcompensating wife) bring on a blood bath of internecine carnage. In 'The Winter's Tale' he is Leontes, the king of Sicily, whose insecurity results in civil chaos. Likewise, Duke Fredrick, in 'As You Like It,' having usurped his sibling's throne, falls prey to fits of Freudian malice that send his country's best people into exile.
No matter that 'Macbeth' is a tragedy, 'The Winter's Tale' a romance and 'As You Like It' a comedy. Regardless of genre, all are warnings. And though some suggest the possibility of reconciliation and recovery, not one offers a reliable map.
Certainly not 'Macbeth.' (You can't reconcile with a corpse.) Stratford's production, directed by the chic avant-gardist Robert Lepage, imagines Banquo, Macduff and the others as members of a motorcycle gang during the Quebec Biker War of the 1990s, their clan affiliations displayed on the backs of their leather jackets. Macbeth has a greasy salt-and-pepper Prince Valiant; his lady is a groupie in a Bonnie Raitt wig. They live in a roadside motel where a mopey cleaner must mop up the blood. The witches' cauldron is an oil canister.
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