Costume
The first characters that we saw were two monsters with a Thailand style mask on each of them. The characters didn’t really fit in well with the rest of the play as they were a Thalind-style dress whereas the rest of the characters wore clothes that were more suited to the time in history. When the monsters had died Macbeth and Banquo emerged out of their costume with Macbeth wearing a red waistcoat over black clothes and Banquo wearing a Blue waistcoat over black clothes. The people wearing red clothes in the Play for example Macbeth were evil as red represents the colour of blood, death and evil whereas the characters wearing blue for example King Duncan were on the good side as blue represents the colour of innocence and loyalty. When the three witches came on stage I thought it was interesting how one of the witches had big ears, one of them had a big mouth and one of them had big eyes to show that they were the eyes, ears and voice.
Lighting
At the beginning of the play the stage was dimly lit in blue, this created the effect of early morning. In the fighting scenes the lighting moved quickly around the stage and it changed colour at a very fast pace. Whenever the narrator spoke in the play he stood left stage and with a red spotlight focussed on him while the rest of the stage was in blackout, this showed that he was not involved in the play as a character as he was separated from all the other characters. At certain points in the play some of the characters looked like they were standing in an alleyway as the lighting was just focused in the middle of the stage, I think this was a successful piece of lighting as it made the stage seem smaller and it looked like the actors were in an enclosed space. Pyrotechnics were used when the first fighting scene was going on, but it wasn’t really successful as only one side of the fireworks went off so it looked odd to the audience however if both fireworks worked correctly I think that it would have looked spectacular. Blinders were used in the play to make the characters on stage look like they are in silhouette; I also think that this was a good, creative use of lighting as it created a good effect.
Sound
I think the special effects on the witches voices were done very well as when the witches spoke they used movement so the audience could tell which witch was speaking at that time, the voice of the witches also created an eerie atmosphere because the voice wasn’t really a normal voice and we knew as soon as we heard the voice that the creature was not human. When the Monsters were dancing at the start of the play there was a lot of quick pace music but when the monsters appeared to start killing each other the music stopped and there was a heartbeat effect to show that the monsters were slowly dieing. The heartbeat did stop but then it started up again, which was unusual as the audience thought that the monsters were dead, but they got back up again and started fighting. The heartbeat effect started up again until eventually it stopped when the monsters were killed. Nearing the end of the performance when the fighting started there was a sudden increase in the volume of the music, this may have shocked the audience as they weren’t expecting it. I think this worked quite well as it represented the fighting that was happening on stage, there was also a lot of banging with sticks this represented the clashing of swords in the battle.
Characterisation
The actors who were playing the witches played their characters very well as they used movement to show who was speaking and they all adapted very well to their character. I don’t think their was much emotion in certain characters voices for example when the news is heard of king Duncan being killed, Macduff should really be devastated but he doesn’t really put enough emotion in his voice to show this. The murderers that Macbeth hires to kill Banquo and his son Fleance were not successful at all because the first time they appeared on stage some of the audience members found their appearance comical and when they killed Banquo it just looked like something off a horror movie how the murderer just beat Banquo to death. Another reason why the murderers were unsuccessful is because when they spoke it just got a laugh out of the audience and they really just didn’t think about how the audience would react to their character. Another thing that I would change is to have more performers as I found that some of the actors were playing more than one character, which in some plays is fine but when the actor who was playing Banquo started talking to Macbeth as a different character, it just didn’t work at all as the audience weren’t to know that there was going to be a change in character at that point in the play. I think Lady Macbeth played her character well towards the end where she was going mad as I could tell that she was going mad by the way that she acted on stage however she could have been a bit louder in the earlier bits of the play.
I enjoyed the performance and I thought it was a very good first time performance but I think that it lacked flow and quality, for it to be perfect though there would have to be a lot of changes for example they need to get rid of the darth vader look-alikes as murderers because they just weren’t serious enough. From seeing the performance it made me think about how I should improve the quality of my own work for example I think I need to use a lot more emotion in my voice and that I need to think about what the audience is going to think about it as well and see what it looks like from their point of view.