Stephan Kimmig butchers Shakespeare’s Macbeth and turns the play into a bland and unnecessary political comment.
Not everyone is born to be the new Christoph Schlingensief. There might be some other directors out there that may have the potential to be both blunt, irreverent, thought-provoking and entertaining at the same time, yet Kimming is not one of them. He tries hard though, but fails. His version of Macbeth is an unfortunate pastiche of a somewhat feminist reading of the play, over-the-top use of stage effects and an unnecessary topping of blunt references to the Bush administration, Austrian politics and the troubles in the Near East.
In Kimming’s version of the play the Scottish Lords and Kings become Texan robber-barons dressed in business attire with huge golden Stetson hats and snake leather cowboy boots. Duncan, Malcolm, Macbeth and Lady Macbeth seem CEO’s of Texan oil companies, while the Witches announcing Macbeth’s murder, rise to power and fate seem to be TV anchormen giving the latest news on the development of the stock market. Notably the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are being inverted with Kimming’s mise en scene of the play. Lady Macbeth (played by Birgit Minichmayr) pushes his husband (Dietmar König) to murder Duncan (Martin Reinke) – an unexpectedly intelligent twist that is marred by the poor performance of Minichmayr, which obviously is suffering from voice problems. While the acting of the rest of the cast is at best average – expectations are high, since the permanent cast of the Burghtheater is supposed to be one of the finest in the German speaking theatre world – the set design is stunning and, in tune with the rest of Kimming’s Macbeth, a wee bit over the top. Plain impressive is the one way mirror wall behind which most of the action takes place. Using lighting the apparently impenetrable mirror becomes a selective window to what happens on stage, or shuts off the spectators and literally rejects them by mirroring the auditorium and those who sit in it. The fact that the stage is flooded during the latter part of the play is again over the top. While the mirror wall is a good metaphor for the fourth wall, and indeed allows for some stunning visual effects that add to the play, flooding the stage just seems random and the idea born out of the ennui of the director looking for some cheap but impressive trick to shake the audience. So while the tide is high on stage the idea really is shallow. In tune with the bleak atmosphere of the play every scene has its synthesizer soundtrack which sets the mood for the scene but often disturbs the dialogue because the soundscapes are played a notch too loud. Music also plays a big role in the closing scene of the play, where Malcolm, after having removed the tyrant from power, gives his victory and acceptance speech – entirely rewritten by Kimming using bits and pieces of Obama’s victory speech – and breaks out into song, in the manner of an old fashioned Las Vegas entertainer waving and shaking hands in the audience and blowing kisses.
This version of Macbeth has its moments, but overall the play is a huge let down. The attacks on Bush, the references to Haider and other Austrian right wing politicians (a character upon the death of Duncan bursts out in tears over the loss of his “Lebensmensch”) are too blunt, some hatchet jobs plain out childish and too much is forced onto the play. There is no irony to be found in Kimming’s rendition, his criticism of politics and society is dogmatic, predictable and a bit pretentious. There is no need to point out that some Texan President is evil – it has been overstated. There is no need to stress that women can be as determined and as dangerous thirsty for power as men. And we know that power is ephemeral and that “the winner takes it all” as Queen already sang in the 1980s. Seriously.
