Director takes 'Macbeth' to hell and back again

Call it curiosity. That's the reason Peter Oyston gives for coming to Yale to direct the Dramat's spring mainstage show, Shakespeare's Macbeth, which runs from Wed., Feb. 23 through Sat., Feb. 26 at the University Theatre. Oyston has directed plays throughout Europe, the outback in his native Australia, and many points in-between, but he had never been to New Haven. Then, during a summer school class that he conducted two years ago at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA), where he currently teaches and directs, "I had two students, and they were really very good—we were doing Richard III. And then some time later they were in contact and asked if I might be interested in coming to Yale where they were both studying. And I said, `Well, yeah,' out of curiosity, but it would depend on the play."

KATHERINE ALDRICH/YH Director Peter Oyston focuses on the subtext in 'Macbeth.'

Realizing that, for Oyston, the play truly is the thing, the Dramat offered him a roster of Shakespeare, including Twelfth Night, but Oyston decided on the "Scottish Play" because it has an unusual appeal for people who might not normally want to sit through a dramatic performance: its length. "It's a fast, furious journey into hell, and in the nick of time, back again," he said. "Our production will be two hours. I think that's very important, because modern audiences are influenced very much by movies. We're almost conditioned to the time frame within the average movie length. Maybe the last two generations have grown up with television being their main preoccupation besides sleep." To compete with the allure of the cineplex, Oyston has conceived of his production in cinematic terms. "A play is like one long shot of a movie. You've got to take the audience's eye with the invisible thread of the play to one particular focus, then another focus, then another focus."

Yet, for Oyston, speed does not mean sacrificing depth. "This is very much a production of subtext. We're trying to reveal why this man chooses this terrible journey. He has choices, which makes it interesting, and he has a conscience, which makes it tragic," he said. Oyston is using his keen visual sense as a painter of Australian landscapes to construct scenic ways of unearthing Macbeth's troubled psyche. The play opens with the burial of a child and the image of a battle that ends with Macbeth victorious; neither event is explicitly staged in the text, but both of them, to Oyston, are central to understanding Macbeth's bloody actions.

He is also making use of his own—and Shake-speare's— knowledge of human character. "Shakespeare operates at so many levels, and one of them is the psychological level," Oyston said. "He would have been a Jung in his time." As Oyston explained, Shakespeare knew that the motives for political ambition are often found in personal tragedy. Oyston believes that one of the main drives behind Macbeth's violent ascent to power is found in textual hints throughout the play that he has lost a child. "Macbeth and Lady Macbeth have put their energy, which is being thwarted by the discontinuity of their line—their child dying—into successive wrestling towards the throne," he explained. "I see Lady Macbeth as someone who has this extraordinary life force which is inverted into ambition, with a laser-beam intensity. I want the audience to think that it is possible that she has substituted this ambition for a lost child."

Beyond its power as theater, and as a specific tragedy, the story depicted in Macbeth has personal resonance for Oyston as an exploration of "fascist behavior." For years, Oyston has tried to understand the roots of fascism as a way of interpreting his own history. "My father was killed in the Second World War by the Germans, and I've always had a fascination with `Who are these people who killed my father?'" he explained. "I learned German, and I went to Germany, and I worked in Germany. But I very soon realized that there is fascism in England and in the average family. There's fascism in any organization, if you define it as one person who wishes to control others." For Oyston, Macbeth is an in-depth character study of a type that recurs throughout time, no matter the country or circumstances. "In terms of a character like Macbeth, who is certainly in the last throes of his reign, it must have been very much like Hitler in his bunker when the Russians were closing in on one side and the British and the Americans were closing in on the other."

While at Yale, Oyston has not only found innovative ways to evoke Macbeth's totalitarianism, he has also taken time to participate in a Trumbull Master's Tea last week and to conduct a Drama School master class. "The people are so kind and thoughtful, and I'm not just buttering them up—very keen to learn, hungry to learn. The number of things that people are involved with is extraordinary. Hardly anyone has ever missed a rehearsal," he said.

For Oyston, Macbeth is the culmination of his time here, and his contribution to Yale. "I'd like the audience to leave feeling and thinking that the power of this journey to hell has left them with a feeling of awe, that characters like Macbeth exist in American history, Russian, German, British history," he said. "If people could see the metaphor, then that would be terrific. And it will be an extraordinary evening. You will feel silly if you haven't come."

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