Macbeth (Joseph Millson) and Banquo (Billy Boyd) encounter the three weïrd sisters in the aftermath of the battle in Act I, scene 3 of Macbeth. Watch now on Globe Player: bit.ly/GlobeMa... #Macbeth
I much prefer when the Sisters are played like this, with subtlety, rather than demented old hags trying to deafen the audience with their high-pitched, chalkboard-scratching cackling
I was just thinking that. And the withes are androgynous meaning they are technically neither men nor women. Ie they have beards but the lineaments of a female.
I pray we can see it here in the S.F. Bay Area. I was overjoyed to be able to see one of the NT's productions here in a cinema. It's a wonderful new trend. I hope it continues and spreads!
There are no witches in the play, Macbeth. They are 'weird sisters' or 'weird women' . The word 'witch' is only used once in the play when one of the sisters reports what someone has said to them - ' Aroint thee witch, the rump- fed runnion cries' . The pointy hat thing, as with little girls in tu- tus running around as fairies in A Midsummer's Night's Dream - is a Victorian accretion - nothing more .
Originally the witches would have been played by old people however the person who directed the play probably thought to use younger actresses to present it, at the beginning in the original play, they were just 'weird sisters' however progressing through it the weird sisters then started to show their true identity
Macbeth and Banquo are good. The weird sisters are not weird sisters. There is nothing unsettling about them. Young women could play them, but differently. These are just regular attractive women and therefore the reactions of the men in this scene do not make sense.
@@neposthenose4884 Those are good questions, and I've been mulling over my reply. For one thing, using an accent from where the play is set certainly makes the experience feel more authentic, but also seems to convey the personality and culture of the characters. Just my thoughts.
Most characters in Shakespeare's plays remain resolutely English, irrespective of setting and apparent nationalities of the characters. Look at "Twelfth Night", which is set in Illyria (notionally in modern-day Croatia), yet the characters all speak and act as if they live just down the road from Shakespeare in Warwickshire. About the only concession that Shakespeare makes to national characteristics is that the characters in his Italian plays tend to rather hot-blooded "latins': a piece of racial stereotyping that persists to this day. I doubt a play like "Troilus and Cressida" would be improved by having half the characters speak with Greek accents and the other half with Troyan (whatever that may be).
