Macbeth By Tom Mallaburn: Play Analysis

On the 20th of February 2018 we were lucky enough to be dragged to Shakespeare's play Macbeth directed by Tom Mallaburn. The play took place at the Pop-up Globe. The Globe had been assembled by industrial scaffolding, creating the main structure. They had done their best to hide this modern building material with painted plywood and period correct flags and other building materials. Unfortunately this did not hide the fact that there was a large scaffolding pole that partially block my view. Beside some of these annoying faults I must give credit to the work that went into making the stage as close to the real theaters of the day. According to Miles Gregory extensive research of Shakespeare’s plays went into working out what the original layout
A example of one of the many things that made Pop-up Globe a stand alone was graphicly showering the crowded in artificial blood and making some of the crowd stand. Some acts of the original script had been modified and or added to, hoping to make the play more viewer friendly. For instance the opening scene had been replaced with a scene of Lady Macbeth (played by Amanda Billing) holding a baby, which is taken and clubbed to death by murders. This helps us make a connection to the line said by Lady Macbeth later in the play “I know what it's like to give suck” and also “I would kill my own baby to be queen”. This shows that she has had a baby at some time, but in the original script we are not shown an example of this. The scene also helps us understand that Lady Macbeth had suffered trauma seeing the baby brutally killed. This may be the reason that Lady Macbeth acts the way she does. Another example of where the script was changed is the ending scene. I was mildly disappointed at this particular change as it showed Macbeth surrendering and giving his knives to Macduff to have his throat slit. I prefer the ending I had looked over at school which had Macduff cut Macbeth's head off and hold it atop his sword. Another disappointing scene of the play was when the Ghost of Banquo was meant to enter and take a seat at the dining table but what we were only left with was a empty chair. How hard could it
The play also focuses on the idea of what makes a man. Seeing what makes a man in that time is very different to nowadays society, in the way that the man had to be roofless and not afraid to get their hands dirty to get what they want. Over the two part play we see Macbeth’s idea of becoming king that hand been planted in his mind by the three witches. This Idea becomes Macbeth and Lady Macbeth's main focus and finally leads to their demise. We are also shown many other characters in the play an example of one of these lesser characters is Macduff. Macduff becomes more of a focus towards the end. We are shown a epic fight between Macbeth and Macduff this scene ends in Macduff taking Macbeth's life in a act to avenge his family that had been killed at Macbeth's