Macbeth’s love for Lady Macbeth
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Transcript
- Michael
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You know what? It’s a trick, it’s an interesting one – the character in Macbeth, because I’m not one of those actors….you know you get some actors….people often say “Oh did you go home and were you thinking murderous thought towards your children all the time?” Well no. I’m an actor, and when I’m acting I’m acting, and when I’m not I’m not, and that’s what I’ve learnt over all the years that I’ve done it.
So preparation for Macbeth was really for me….well I knew the lines, I’ve always known the lines. I’ve known the lines for years, so it wasn’t even about that, it was just about making sure that I was able to love Lady Macbeth. One of the things I really went for was that those two people love each other, and that he does it for her. In my production he did it for her. Yes, ambition, but he’s prepared to back off. He does it for her.
And so really it was getting that relationship right, and the first part of the play, seeing the witches, and you know looking startled and playing all that stuff, it was pretty straight forward, where it started to get really interesting for me was when Macbeth and Lady Macbeth met, and from then on.
And so that was every night, Anna Hewlett who played Lady Macbeth and I would get together before the show, and decide what we were going to go for each night, and generally we would talk about high stakes. Love. Love. Love. And making sure that every time we looked at each other throughout the play, we kept asking each other with our eyes, “Are you still with me? Do you still want to do this, are you still with me?”
And of course the tragedy is, that Macbeth just leaves her behind in her naivety and she can’t handle it, and that’s the tragedy of it. So I didn’t go and study Scottish Kings, or learn martial arts, or study witchcraft, because all that’s in the play. I don’t need to. I know how to fight on stage. I’ve done heaps of stunt work. So I didn’t have to do any of that. And really I just wanted to make sure I was fit enough to be able to carry it off.