‘Macbeth’ succeeds in avoiding its onstage curse when it’s on-screen

Los Angeles Times Theater Critic Thespians, a superstitious lot, insist that “Macbeth” should never be directly referred to inside a theater. If an actor accidentally forgets to call Shakespeare’s malevolent masterpiece “the Scottish play,” an elaborate ritual is required to prevent all hell from breaking loose. “Macbeth” on-screen doesn’t have the same jinxed reputation, thanks to Orson Welles, Akira Kurosawa and Roman Polanski, all of whom successfully put their auteur stamps on the play. Drama critic Kenneth Tynan summed up the quandary brilliantly in a 1955 review of Laurence Olivier’s Macbeth at Stratford-upon-Avon: “Instead of growing as the play proceeds, the hero shrinks; complex and many-levelled to begin with, he ends up a cornered thug, lacking even a death scene with which to regain lost stature.” For Tynan, Olivier miraculously succeeded in holding our interest by zeroing in on “the anguish of the de facto ruler who dares not admit that he lacks the essential qualities of kinship.” This is but one approach to playing the usurping Thane. When he first encounters the weird sisters and hears that he shall be king, his buddy Banquo asks, “Good sir, why do you start and seem to fear / Things that do sound so fair?” Macbeth’s twitchy reaction is often eclipsed onstage by the spectacle of the ghastly witches.