Macbeth director: "We want everyone to see the story through fresh eyes"

Jonathan Holloway is a genius choice of director, as long as he can pull it off, because setting Macbeth during WW1 with a cast of recovering and traumatised officers and their nurses is quite a feat. Not for Creation maybe, well known for its flamboyant and accomplished productions, but still a departure from the usual open-air productions of the Bard’s work.

“I couldn’t care less,” Jonathan says in no uncertain terms, “Shakespeare set in quads framing an Oxford college, with a cast in period costume, bores me to tears. I just wasn’t interested in doing something picturesque — It doesn’t stir me! Oxford is full of student Shakespearian productions but nothing new ever gets made. Watching Much Ado About Nothing by the setting sun while eating strawberries and cream on deckchairs in an Oxford college garden is a response not a reaction.”

The right man for the job then, the founder of Red Shift Theatre and recipient of three consecutive Fringe First Awards and the First Prize at the 2013 Prix Italia, having already made his ground-breaking mark on the world of theatre. So when Creation decided Lady Margaret Hall’s association with WW1 as a military hospital would be perfect for their big summer production aimed at bringing the text alive via the history of the building, they brought Jonathan on site, showed him their vision and the die was cast.“We want everyone to see the story through fresh eyes,” he tells me, “and we feel very strongly about that, though the answer was evident as soon as we viewed the location.

“Macbeth is primarily about taking the audience through its poetry and energy via some genuine scares. It’s about surprises.

“So while Macbeth is a multi-layered event with thrills and spills, this production is energising. People know Macbeth, but this is filtered through the experiences of the traumatised officers who have come back from the front and are being looked after in a sanatorium within hearing distance of the guns of northern France.”

In fact, Jonathan is going to great lengths to get away from the prettiness of the setting: “While the house is a nice backdrop, a lot of Macbeth is seen through the windows or in amongst the wards,” he explains.

Even so, jumping several centuries requires a real leap of faith. “I am older now so see things differently. I’m a dad. I’m 58. I have five children, and the thing that stands out for me is how much Macbeth is about children, how they are damaged during the course of the play and the dictatorship, so setting it during WW1 gave us a direct link because it was about a generation of men that were lost. It was like a connecting tissue for me.”

A hard brief? “It does not matter how tried and tested any production is, that’s not important to us, it should be a culmination of the text, the people, and what emerges from all these elements. Generalisation is the death of any Shakespeare production but if you’ve done the work you don’t need to worry, and I’m pleased with the casting, there is a lot of strength and maturity in the group.”

An easy transition then? “The play protests under the weight of your own conceits so you have to wrestle with it until you feel it submitting, and it’s behaving at the moment,” Jonathan chuckles. “Put it this way, we have a relationship.”

As for Creation, why does Jonathan think they brought him in? “I’m a new pair of eyes and can raise Creation’s profile — it’s more about Creation’s development than anything else, because Creation’s reputation precedes it. It’s a great theatre company and a different beast now from the one that set out to bring outdoor Shakespeare to Oxford originally.”

Not a hard sell, then? “Four weeks in Oxford with great actors and a fantastic location?” Jonathan laughs. “I didn’t think about it too long. I’m not even thinking about the weather.

“We can shove the production indoors for a spirited performance if needs be, but this Macbeth is as visual as it is audio, and the experience of seeing it outside is what this production is aimed at.”

Macbeth
Creation Theatre
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford
Tomorrow (Friday) until September 13
creationtheatre.co.uk