Australian TV Plays: Macbeth (22 Sept 1965)

The ABC has its second crack at this Shakespeare. I wonder why they didn't do something fresh, like Julius Caesar?

Premise

You know it.

Cast

Wynn Roberts as Macbeth
Terri Aldred as Lady Macbeth
Keith Eden as Macduff
Keith Lee as Banquo
Clark Bleazby as Ross
Allan Lander as Lennox
Mark Albiston as Malcolm
Michael Duffield as Seyton
Peter Hepworth as Fleance
Joan Harris as Lady Macduff
Patricia Kennedy, Roma Johnston and Agnes Dobson as the witches
Sydney Conabere, Lloyd Cunningham, Nevil Thurgood as murderers

Production

The production was directed by Alan Burke who made it after returning from London. He told Graham Shirley in 2004

I was asked if I would like to go to Melbourne and do Macbeth. I had done three Shakespeares up to that point. I had done Taming of the Shrew, Merchant of Venice was the first, Taming of the Shrew, and the third Tempest. And I gather MacBeth must have been set for schools, I think it was what determined their choice of Shakespeare’s and maybe it was set for Victoria. So I went down and did that

Burke said, "I always approach Shakespeare with reverence, but not with awe. Someone once said, 'A producer should read every new play as if it were Shakespeare, and Shakespeare as if it were a new play.' I heartily agree with this.... The main value of the play is inside the minds of its characters. TV, with its revealing close-ups, is the ideal medium with which to demonstrate this."

It was set in the year the play was written, around 1600, rather than when Shakespeare originally set it, around 1100. This meant the characters wore traditional tartans.

"Our aim was authenticity," said Burke. "Every detail was thoroughly researched - the tartans, costumes and swords. The atmosphere of a battle in the eeriness of a misty forest could not have possibly be recreated in a studio. But we found the perfect location for it in Mount Macedon."

"I put everything I had into it," sid Burke. "The result was really gratifying:"

An ABC spokesman told TV Times "as well as being an interesting and stimulating production for viewers generally, ABC-TV's Macbeth will be of immense value to students who are studyting the play. It will give them a better understanding and appreciation of one of Shakespeare's classics."

The final battle was shot in Mount Macedon over two days involving cast and crew of 83 in all. Wardrobe managed Keith Clarke said "the kilts had to be carefully planned and supervised, otherwise with 30 men fighting enthusiastically we could have ended up with a few nasty accidents."

The bulk of filming was done at the ABC studios in Ripponlea, Melbourne.

Trevor Ling was the designer. Robert Hughes did the music.

Burke told Graham Shirley:

I did the adaptation myself and we worked out what we would need to do outside... I think it’s a very wise thing that we did before we embarked at all on studios... I went to Adelaide and did a totally different production before we came back to do studio. We went to Mount Macedon in the middle of winter, my God it was cold and we had two days up there. I stayed over but the cast went up and down in the bus from Melbourne, first day to set it and rehearse it and then the second day to actually shoot it. And we depended on weather. It was absolutely icy but thank God no rain and we used bit broad shots and tried to make it look as magnanimous as possible with the number of extras we had, we couldn’t do too much. And the swords were all I think made in the workshop and they weren’t all that stout and we had to give a direction to everybody ‘if your sword breaks, die’. And so we did and a couple of things that worked very nicely. The trouble was, shooting a close up on OB, which might have been sort of below the shoulder somewhere, by the time we came to assemble the end result, I realised that in the studio in Scenes preceding the battle, I had done close-ups really top of head to bottom of chin. That was then like receding a bit when you did the battle in sequence and if I had done things a second time, I would have shot much more closely on the close ups in battle but that was alright...

I wanted a shot of Malcolm’s army coming up over a rise in the ground. In other words we’re looking at the hill and we see the heads coming up and then the bodies and they ended up full shot and that was a bit tricky. We eventually got something approximating it and we also of course had to something we hated which was to chop down a tree or two because you know, that’s what they did and I was a bit scared. I didn’t like to think we were damaging the territory but they got away with that.

A couple of things. I did a trick shot, what’s the name of the man, the son and the father ride into battle, I can’t remember, anyway Michael Duffield was playing the father and I wanted a shot of him impaled on a tree and it worked very well. Michael leaned against the tree and then we forwarded it and we put the top half of the sword sticking out of him as if it had gone through him and into the tree trunk. Things like that were quite fun...

[This was filmed in video OB rather than film] I’ve always preferred OB to film for inserts because the quality matches the studio quality. That dreadful jump from the clarity of studio to the slightly soft film content always worried me and I tried to introduce where I could, OB’s for drop ins. And the first time I did it I think was Merchant of Venice and that would be I think ’61. We had a couple of OB scenes in that and I said ‘please may I have them on cameras instead of on film’. And everybody agreed. It was an experiment at the time but I was delighted, they matched so much better in the editing.

I seem to remember it might have been 30 [extras for the battle], I really can’t remember at this distance, but it wasn’t a lot. You had to sort of place them very delicately to look as though there were more than there were and as there had to be two sides, we had very small armies on either side... I don’t recall there was any fog. No we didn’t use any effects of that nature because we had none. No idea what we’d get when we got there so we didn’t specially plan anything. No it was fairly direct but it was very overcast and a bit grey which was nice. It was non committal weather. That nice sort of, could be quite brooding and as we were in black and white of course, it looked very sombre.

"The swordfighitng had to be very carefully planned and supervised," said Somerville, "otherwise eith 30 men fighting enthusiastically we could have ended up with a few nasty accidents."

Wardrobe manager - Keith Clarke. Battle scenes and swords devised by Harry Somerville.

Reception

The Age called it "ambitious and, generally, extremely competent. It was an encouraging experiment in what can be done to popularise Shakespeare."

TV Times thought it was not good enough.