“Is this a handbag that I see before me”? Excellent question, Thane of Glamis. You can get around to the bloody dagger stuff later in the plot.
Imagine. Here you are, Macbeth, Scene I, wandering across a blasted heath with your pal Banquo, minding your own business and this phalanx of busybody witches dances up, blabbing on about you being Thane of Cawdor, and King of Scotland. And the old trouts are brandishing handbags. Not “witchy”, “Halloweeny,” scary handbags, but smart items straight from Saks on 5th Avenue. “A handbag?”, as Lady Bracknell incredulously intoned.
As did the lady on my left, Stalls Row X, New York’s Met, at the interval; “Say, whad’ya think’s with the handbag thing? That where they keep their eye of newt and toe of frog? And, how about the yellow Mad Men specs. Witches really wear those in Scotland?”
I was at a bit of a loss. After all, Scotland is a nation contemplating a reversion to the Groat as its currency. Bonkers specs pale into insignificance. My new friend had cut, with Bronx frankness, to the central flaw in this Adrian Noble production of Verdi’s Macbeth – the composer’s favourite opera – which debuted at the Met in 2007.
It is inappropriately set, in post-war Scotland, where to my recollection Bosnian guerrilla-type soldiers were not stalking the forests in dun coloured ankle length coats, wielding sub machine guns, witches did not buy their handbags in Jenners – upmarket Saks-type Edinbugh Princes Street store – and usurping kings did not appear from behind birch trees to lead their renegade militia, wearing Harrods crackers’ gold crowns.
