>> charlie: welcome to the program. we begin this evening with the star of mackbeth, kenneth branagh. >> you know, at the end, we talked about he's fearless in battle at the beginning, then through the power of suggestion he is fearful and guilt-ridden, dream-laden and sleep-deprived for most to have the play. right at the end, what does he have left that shakespeare seems to admire in some of his soldier poets, ant any, mackbeth? it's a simple thing, he has guts! he's right there at the end, i'll kiss the ground before malcolm's feet. the forest moved and you weren't born of woman and the bear against me. you know what? come and get it. >> charlie: we continue adding rob ashford, his co-director and alex kingston, his co-star. >> when i met ken, i thought,

i'm just going to be honest about how i feel about the character of lady macbeth and either how i feel will be right for the particular production and if it's not, it's not, and then i'm absolutely not the right person for this role. and it was just lucky that we both seem to have the same feeling. >> mackbeth for the hour, next. >> there's a saying around here: you stand behind what you say. around here, we don't make excuses, we make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it's needed most.

but i know you'll still find it, when you know where to look. captioning sponsored by rose communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> charlie: kenneth branagh is here. he's currently starring in and co-directing mackbeth at the park avenue armory here in new york city. the production comes from manchester, england, has received extraordinary reviews. michael billington of the guardian said at times he evoked golden memories of olivier in the role. here's a look at the trailer.

>> what! can the devil spe truth? >> looks like the innocent! is this a dagger which i see before me? (singing)

(indiscernible). >> i'm pleased to have sir kenneth branagh back at this table. welcome. >> thank you, charlie. >> charlie: have you been waiting to do this? >> i have, circling it. it's the copy -- the copy first came across our kitchen table when i was 10 or 11 ars old. my brother was doing it at school. i saw the three weird sisters on the cover. i asked him what it was about. my first introduction to mackbeth. it's the same thing that's been with me every night and sitting on my table now, it's been with me 40 years. >> charlie: did you need to do it at a time in your life. >> i had an acting mentor and we

often talked about this part and he said, you really have to wait till you're the right age. in my early 30s and 40s, he said, you're still too young. i didn't understand it, but i listened because i revered him. somehow it came together through virtue of the manchester festival and meeting rob ashford, the brilliant co-director and finding the right elements like alex kingston to be lady mackbeth. things started to fall together, so it became the right time to do it. >> charlie: you'd had a ten-year absence from shakespeare. >> yes, i had, and like many things in my career, although others may view it differently, these sort of accidents happen. you find yourself on wonderful diversion ritracts. it's often -- my wife jokes about it. she says people say to me, oh, does he read shakespeare? it's by the bedside, does he read it? she says, what do you tell them?

i said, yes, i do. she says you're always doing that. so ten years away from doing it but quite a lot of years of just being exposed to it. so it's always in my life. >> charlie: how is this mackbeth different? >> every time a particular group do it, it is different. maybe we take a speech at the beginning spoken by the bloody y sergeant. macbeth is interesting for a character who is fearless that becomes fearful for most of the play. we dared to take that away and put what he describes on stage. and we wanted to do it for a couple of reasons. first, when you meet macbeth, you know a little of what they really mean about this fearlessness.

this savage ri. he's a man who should not have the problems he has later on when faced with another murder. in battle, he seems fearless. what we chiefly wanted to do is introduce to the audience a a theatrical energy they can be a part of, the he can tick nature of the circumstances which mean these two fundamentally at the beginning of the play good people make very bad decisions because the play, circumstances, the plot doesn't give you time to -- >> charlie: ben bradford captured that thing. he said you hurdled forward by the beginning of the play and it had that kind of energy. >> well, because you're always so interested in terms of what goes on in the corridors of power. and when one thinks about why and how these two with people could do this extraordinary thing, when one thinks about it in plays, it's easy to think about it in melodramatic terms,

but this man kills a friend of his, the king, whatever, and he does it swiftly though other people describe him as being conscienced. so other people dismiss the play and say it's absurd because it all happens too quickly. our production was trying to say perhaps these things only happen quickly, you know, without thought. >> charlie: and would he have done it without his wife? >> well, she, i think, describes him as being not without ambition but without the sickness, the milk of human kindness. there are remarks about an essentially good nature. but once he's had this amazing success, the reviews are brilliant, the duncan says fantastic, i'm planting you and you're going to be having all sorts of rewards -- >> charlie: and a new name, even. >> -- yeah, but actually i'm giving my job to him, my son.

and immediately macbeth is a man with a witch's pronouncement in his mind in a few short moments ago saying well, why should he be in the way? i'll have to either -- it's a step that lies in my way on which i must fall down or else or leap, which means basically murder in this con text. so it's a wonderful play for putting people in this unusual extreme position. >> it's great. you see them opening up in a stone hedge kind of thing. it's extraordinary, and their prophecies one by one, so he's got to believe something. >> what do you feel about that,? the lives of the good and the great and the power of suggestion. some people would say that's a silly play about a man who believes his horoscope. someone for whom everything is going well. >> charlie: i think men and women of power believe in myth,

too. >> interesting, yeah. and this idea of what the legacy is, you know macbeth and lady macbeth not being able to have children or haven't been successful yet, so immortality is not had by family, so maybe it's seized in the history books by being king. >> charlie: is she more ambitious than he? >> i think she's differently ambitious. one of the things we tried to bring in was the savage world where she says goodbye to him and he goes off to battle, the idea of whether he comes home or not is very heavily questioned and when we do come back, what we did present is we always wanted to present a functioning relationship. they fans idea the pants off each other and it's very passionate. >> charlie: the passion is clear. >> he said there are no

successful marriages except macbeth's. they always die and kill a king along the way. the first conversation with alex central to the show and performance is he adores her and she's a natural companion for him and i think that they -- you know, the breakup -- >> charlie: was she stronger or weaker? >> well, again, you know, they both at different times invoke the dark world. >> charlie: they do. she's the first one to say, right, i'm inviting evil into the room. we're in a room where you believe in it. audience, you've just seen it because they're hanging around the stones and they're scary. i'm inviting them in. she has balls enough to do it the first time around. the balance of power in the relationship switches and she, interestingly, he's the one that says let's not do it night and she says you have to seize the opportunity now. then they get it, he becomes

president, and she says, now leave everything alone. but now for him he has to be president and square off everything. >> charlie: wasn't that part of the prophecies of the witches, too? he was scared because of what they said so he went off killing anybody. >> yeah, they tried to square all those things. the one predicted to be the father of kings tries to kill both he and his son and his determination to leave no stone unturned means he won't ever sleep again and there is no satisfaction. and the first moment we see him as king, he's with her and they celebrate and the production has us walk down at the coronation and he sit down and says, to be thus is nothing but to be safely thus. now i have to -- i'm here, i have a crown a throne, and it's nothing! it's nothing! >> charlie: but to be safely thus. >> but to be safely thus.

and then his splurge of paranoia. >> charlie: no one i know of is more identified with shakespeare tha. there is this question, when you prepare to do macbeth, do you look at every production to look at olivier, whatever form you could get your hands on? >> over the years, i suppose, but in preparation for this, no, i did the opposite. there was a point i wanted to do it or at least i knew i would do it when i staed looking at other productions. >> charlie: that's when you thought the time is me. >> yes, and i didn't want my brain to be fluxed with the brilliance of other people. i thought, we have to find our own way to it. so i stopped as a kind of growing understanding that i

felt ready to have a go. >> charlie: but i read you thought about doing it way up in the future, a very futuristic. >> yeah. >> charlie: and what drew you away from that to where you are? >> this difficult thing of when you come up with a sort of what you might call a strong concept for the world of the play and all these plays are very elastic so they can acome date anything we might try and trip him up there. but many times the idea ultimately has some reductive quality. you might get -- you know, in the new york stock exchange, you might get fantastic resonance in the world of money but the whole play is about love and the fifth act is whether the girl will choose the boy or whatever it might be. so ultimatelieth the futuristic macbeth felt as though it potentially denied the savage riand the primitive nature of

some of the motivations. at the end of the play, malcolm, the new king to be, should be those who helped me here, earls, the first scotland ever had, and you sense a journey from a primitive to a more civilized world where people in power will give you an honor and then you won't be fighting it. >> charlie: it's interesting about shakespeare. first of all, i think i read james v who game james of england would come to shakespeare's plays? >> yes, indeed, and it was the author of a famous book on demonology, so he was particularly obsessed with the subject of macbeth. >> charlie: and the story some people thought he got from the holingshed chronicles? >> yes, shakespeare was comprehensive in where he went for his stories. he knew how to borrow and how to

be inspired. kingston and i did clee cleopatra. says she sat on a burge and it burned on the water. >> charlie: there's a comparison between the two. >> in terms of the central focus on a relationship between two complicated people, a powerful man with a brilliant woman, and they have sort of balancing impact, but the barch speech in thomas north's lives of the ancient romans, et cetera, shakespeare pilfers fairly comprehensively. so he gathered his gatherings. >> charlie: every writer steals -- a great writer steals a lot. >> yeah, yeah. >> charlie: there's also this, in terms of this, when you -- there are sillo questions and lines that you have, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.

did you approach those differently? did you have a mindset about them that you wanted to, in your own vision, not because you wanted to be alike or different than anyone else who had been macbeth, but some sense of how you wanted to take these pivotal moments? >> well, they all -- >> charlie: and deliver them. it's an interesting question. we -- for instance, tomorrow and tomorrow, it seems it grew organically out of this idea that aside from the sort of vast and dense existential howl that you might describe it as being, it is also specifically and particularly the beginning of the speech a sort of speech of mourning for his wife and in our production that he sort of understood lined the passion between them that the dynamic between the simple, painful personal loss of a woman that he adored through his own strutting and fretting and idiocy, if you

like, informed the way that that came out so it became very personal. we wanted to take away from the show what i've seen sometimes in versions of the play which is perfectly fine but not to my particular taste that it be too dry and too intellectually extreme. >> charlie: you didn't want that? what did you want it to be? >> visceral, passionate, as much emotional intelligence as philosophical intelligence. it can get very dry because the poetry is so dense and complex. but the double up with shakespeare is if you can connect all of that brilliance, all of that sort of intellectual fire power at this incredible level with the sense that you're watching real, live human beings and there but for the grace of god go all of us. >> charlie: dealing with all the issues everybody faces in life, life, death, jealousy, rage, guilt or in this case

guilt. >> guilt, yeah, and people, my goodness, you can feel the atmosphere in the audience when they have done swiftly within 20 minutes of the play in an atmosphere where the audience is backing away and the thing is throbbing. they've done it. they put the cold steel in the flesh of the person they knew! king duncan getting -- no, i killed one of our friends and now what do i do? suddenly they become like children, almost. that irrevocable moment, people understand that moment in their lives, they might not kill a king but they will do things from which they can never recover and in one nanosecond, life will never be the same again. and shakespeare writes and people go, oh, my god, that could be me. >> charlie: either because of choices you made or things thrust upon you. >> yes, and, of course, it's terribly moving. people find the particular production moving. why should you feel moved or even sympathetic to characters

who performed such heinous act but somehow shakespeare's mast riallows you by the end when he loses her and when he can convey either in lady macbeth's sort of dissent into what may appear to be madness or just you already sense with macbeth at the end -- sounds like a grand thing to say, but the play does it, the bleakness in his soul is so profound that it's chilling. the glimpse of a kind of dark eternity that he shows us is so terrifying that you can't help but be moved because the price he has paid for this moment of reckless ambition is so deep and profound as to shape one to the -- shake one to the very core on his behalf. >> charlie: and lead to his death. >> yeah, yeah. one thing, isn't it strange, the end we talked about, he's

fearless in battle at the beginning. then through the power of suggestion, he is fearful, guilt-ridden, dream-ladened and sleep deprived for most of the play. in the end, is what shakespeare admires in his characters, it's a simple thing -- he has guts! so he's right there at the end, i'm going to kiss the ground before mall come's feet. he has a forest moved and you weren't born of woman and the bear is against me. you know, come and get it! that's sort of a ridiculous quality, but shakespeare says, what else have you got? show me something! he hangs in there. somehow there's a profound respect for this. so i never ran away. and he talks to her and to bancroft and compliments them

both and uses the word dauntless and shakespeare admires and i do, people who go through life just putting one foot in front of the other and the other, what else can you do? shakespeare says it must feel grander than that but sometimes all there is to do is show up. >> charlie: is there a one, two, three in shakespeare's works? >> your life changes, you're reacting to things, you know, and he's so comprehensive. you've had many brilliant conversations with blume who says shakespeare invented the human. the scholar in the '60s called him our contemporary. john guild says hamlet sums up the process of living. i feel that applies across many of these plays. right now one soul is shaken by

what macbeth does to the audience. we are there, we are the lucky vessels through which this thing passes, currently, and this particular show. >> charlie: five minutes before you're going on, what are you doing, thinking and saying to yourself? >> i'm meditating is what i'm doing. yeah, meditating. >> charlie: you're clearing your mind? >> i'm getting ready. the readiness is all and it applies to many things, i think. my whole day really is devoted to getting ready for that moment. that's all do i right now. people say, oh, you're having a wonderful time in new york, well, yes, but partly because i'm at the theater hours and hours and hours before any sane human being would be. i do my meditation, listen to tapes, read, do the lines every day, you do the whole play in varying ways. you try to keep it fresh. in the five minutes before you go on, you meditate. the other thing, i swear to god i think this is just the most fantastic thing to be able to do.

i mean it's really tingly and you know it's not an easy thing to do, given one's aware of the effort of it in terms of what we do, but it's absolutely glorious, glorious thing to do. i sometimes feel like i'm a big fan of sports, generally, and it feels like you're in the tunnel waiting to come out before a huge gauge, and it's like tournament tennis or something. some of it is up here, some in the body, you know, and in our case we start with a five-minute battle. >> charlie: just revs you up. man, does it rev us up, because we have to practice the fights every day. they're dangerous, drainage, we're in the dark, 25 enormously butch fellows coming at us with pieces of cold steel. >> charlie: so you have to be athletic, too. >> it's an all consuming things. i think i've learned more about the discipline required for doing this on this particular job than ever before. a wonderful learning experience. >> charlie: you do yoga and meditation. >> yes, all at the service of

the thing itself. it's all absolutely built into getting to that moment before you go on, believing you can bring as much preparation and technique as you possibly can to it and then you create the conditions where tonight via mr. shakespeare, it might even be inspired. that's what you're trying to get to. >> charlie: it might even be inspired. >> yeah. >> charlie: when you -- were you born to do this? i mean, when you think of yourself now, i couldn't have done anything else, this is what i was, as some people say, put on earth to do. >> i guess it is what i think now. i used to sort of -- i was perplexed by it and now all i know is when i do it i feel as though this is who i am and what i do, and people are saying, why are you going to the theater so early? well, this is me, this is who i am. and to be able to say these -- people are saying, well, when did you think you would do this play or that play?

i am profoundly grateful i get to -- >> charlie: my sense of you is that you had confidence in yourself. you had both ambition and confidence, you know, that you wanted it. >> you know where the confidence came from is the sense of doing something you're happy to be doing. that's the gift i had. i was about 16 years old with no sort of real goal ahead, i realized i can act and i want to act and that's it, just as simple as that. >> charlie: it's the greatest thing in the world. >> oh, my goodness. >> charlie: what i want to do is what i'm good

always doing stories about big ideas and people with big

responsibilities, you mentioned l.b.j. earlier and people with the kind of sense of things. really in the center of it is the same thing. you're happy to be creating, acting and telling stories, it's what you do. the blessing and privilege that has to be action films, you know, you get this opportunity, but really it's the same thing. sometimes the notch on the budgets go crazy but at the center of it you're really trying to enjoy that same fun of white hot creativity in those venues. sometimes you just get resources you would not otherwise get. and i ask for a camera crane or movie like that that i would have to be on my niece for something like love's labor lost. so for me there's also a balance and a balancing thing or a -- >> charlie: are you happiest when you're working? >> i'm very, very happy when i'm working and i'm enjoying it. sometimes stuff gets in the way. but i wouldn't say necessarily -- i love life. i love life. >> charlie: it's not that. it's not the comparison of not

playing versus working. it is that if, in fact, doing things along the lines of excellence, using all your powers along the lines of excellence gives you a sort of unique satisfaction, whether at work or family or -- >> i think that's very well put. basically i try to look at every moment in life like that. it's just that it's all -- it's all a bit like a fortune cookie, unfortunately. but it is a gift. i suppose one has the tangible examples of it sometimes in something like macbeth because the work is so much bigger and richer than anything one could ever dream of and it is infinite that it continues to surprise at all times. so i'm in it some nights and walk out of the show perplexed by how bewilderingly full of wonder it is and you have a chance to do it and it becomes zonal. you are utterly in a zone, in

flow, however one likes to put it, with this thing that is acting on you, plus you have this marvelous extra gift that is life, that is this relationship to all those people who are there at that time. and when the magic happens, my goodness, it goes wrong or when shakespeare kicks in and he's writing in, like, fifth gear and then has a sixth and seventh gear and then the hairs on the back of your neck go up and you are changed. you are changed and you're aware that his work is changing the lives of other people. >> charlie: another tep years you'll do lear? >> i would like to. >> charlie: you will have to decide what the right time is. >> hopefully, if that is to be on my dance card and i hope it is, yes. >> charlie: were you really proud of the fact that you did -- i mean, i couldn't wait to get it, especially when it was on dvd, the entire literal hamlet? >> yes, oh, yes.

>> charlie: which made me remember so many people had it. >> it was a joyful thing. i was so proud to have done it. i can't believe we managed to do it. god bless martin shaffer, alan and all the people who wrote the check and had the faith. >> charlie: great to have you. we'll take a break and come back with the cast from macbeth at the armory here in new york. (bagpipes playing) >> you can call it an armory or whatever you like. it really is a theater. >> it's a theater. it's a place of fantasy. >> rebecca robinson is the executive producer of new york's park avenue armory which easts all manner of events including macbeth. in the ildle age it housed the silk stocking regiment.

>> names like vanderbilt, astor, rhinelander, you know, that world. >> in 1880 new york's high society soldiers spent over a billion dollars in this day's money to build an armory. rebecca, this must be one of the most spectacular guilded age rooms in new york, not what you would expect in a military barracks. >> we talked about this being a military barracks but hobbles with a room like this, that you were also really steep. >> the armory has a 55,000 square foot drill hole. almost 100 men and women transformed it into a spectacular setting for macbeth. >> now you walk in and there's a huge group and you have hooded figures leading you. >> it's like stonehenge. yes, but that's not in scotland. i think that's the idea, it's

primitive. >> look how bulky this is. you can smell the mud in the air. i've never been in a theater and feel wet mud on the floors. it's extraordinary. you walk past the bog and the rocks and through the mud and suddenly you're in the theater. >> yes. and lights. yes. but it has sort of a medieval feeling, militaristic, but also the medieval pew look, very simple and straightforward and you see all the faces on the other side. the thing about being in the environment, you are part of the crowd. >> this a dagger which i see before me? >> charlie: sitting on stage i asked robertson why she felt the drill hole was an appropriate setting for macbeth? i think it has military history, that helps. it has the pageantry that goes along with military. i think the strong thoughts you feel that sort of strength and the industrial nature of this

drill hall kind of works with the fighting, the swords, the metal and the clash. seems to me to be kind of symbiotic. it works together as a place. then where else are you going to build a heap in new york. >> how have audiences reacted when they do this? >> we try to make the audience part of whatever is going on. you're in the blood, the action, you're moving. when you walk in and you see these stones and that light and that glow and that really creepy heap that has the witches rolling around in it, you're in a different world and that's what we try to do. >> charlie: that was oz take us inside the park avenue armory where macbeth is being staged. rob ashford joins me, co-director of macbeth, won emmys and tonys and other roles.

liz liz is on e.r. i am proud to have all of them at this table. welcome. what is the melding of talent between you and you? >> hmm... well, you know, we never defined it, ever. >> charlie: you don't have a shakespearean background. >> other than in college, i played a part. but, no, it's the first and what a great teacher and partner. >> charlie: explain to me how it came together. not in terms of how you ended up in the deal, but how you approached the deal and how do you complement each other. >> well, i think when we first met to talk about the play and to talk about a -- ken had a very specific idea about the feel of the play tore the time period and the kind of rawness and the kind of visceral nature but is very clear which sounded thrilling to me and we worked

together on making an edited of the play to cut it down because he said he'd love it with no intermission. two hours of intermission and i said sign me up for that. >> charlie: we talk about the pacing. is a lot of that what he does? >> all of us do it as well. it's such a determination to feel as though you can act on the lines and that the audience are enjoying having to be, you know, fairly fast thinking because these characters think faster. but as far as the mel, just having trust in each other. i didn't mind saying things about how people were moved around the stage and rob didn't mind saying, why not say it like this, or what does that word mean. we ended up popping into each other's territory, i think. >> it started with casting. when we made the edit, we read totally, and then also the casting, that we didn't, you

know, say specifically to each other, we want a mcduff who does x, y, z, or anything like that. we just go in the room with actors and we both have the same tastes and things we liked about the castings and that came across easily. the design was so easy. we just fell in it together. >> charlie: how is it for you because you're getting rave reviews, too. >> i have to say just coming on to the last question you had, as one of the actors, it was amazing having ken and rob directing us because they were so incredibly complimentary and, you know, when ken, of course -- because he's on stage pretty much all the time, so it's not easy for him to be in the role but also be watching and directing while he's in the role. so he was able to sort of focus and work on his relationships with the other characters, knowing that rob was there as the eyes and just seeing in terms of the staging and the

choreography and the feeling. i mean, even rob had never done a shakespeare before. he understands the emotions, even if he's not sort of as experienced with text. but, you know, you have to have emotion with text. so it sort of worked brilliantly, and they really -- i mean, it sort of is like the most awesome partnership, these two could possibly have created. >> charlie: what did you want to bring to lady macbeth? >> well, i think that -- i'd never done this play before. i'd studied it at school. i'd certainly watched some productions over the years. but i had to always a very instinctive feeling about who i thought she was and who they were as a couple, and i just thought when i met ken, i thought, i'm just going to be

honest about how i feel about the character of lady macbeth and either how i feel is going to be right for this particular production that they're going to put on or it's is not, and if it's not, then i'm absolutely not the right person for this role because i see it in a particular way, and it just was lucky that we both seemed to have the same feeling. and i think i have this theory about the play of mcbeth, which is it's one of shakespeare's later plays. >> charlie: 1600 was it? before, this already, he'd written amazing female roles, really complex. and i think that the interpretation ofo the play and of this couple has always made them sort of prtty

two-dimensionally evil. my daughter, when i said i was going to do it, she said, oh, mommy, she's pure evil. she's been talk that by teachers because that's the interpretation people have sort of put on the play. my theory is that shakespeare is far too brilliant of a writer to write characters who were so, in a way, two-dimensional. you know, he's not that person. my theory is that, after the english civil war when theaters were closed down, shakespeare was banned, macbeth and in the restoration macbeth was one of the only plays that was allowed to be performed but it was used as a morality play about the evils of woman and how lady macbeth is this eve-like figure, this temptress, if it's not for her her husband wouldn't have done it. and she sort of -- and i think

over the centuries, the shadow of that interpretation way back then has stayed with the play, and i think it's not right because i don't thing shakespeare would have -- >> charlie: so she's more than evil? >> she's not evil. >> charlie: she's not evil? no! i think as ken said, they are two characters who are in love, who are passionate, who are complex personalities, but take a tragically, awfully they make a wrong decision on -- >> charlie: a big decision. i know, but it's not -- it's something that they regret. there's nothing they can do about it. they regret it. it's -- you know, if they were just evil, you wouldn't care, and a lot of productions you don't care. >> they both do mad from the deed in their way. and if they were evil people to

born to be evil, they would grow from that and not spiral down as what happened to both of them. >> i think it's a far more interesting play as you see them as good people who have gone bad because everybody can relate to that. >> charlie: why did they go bad? >> well, because there was this little opportunity that was presented to them. in a sense, the apple. >> charlie: why does she want to do it now, this evening? >> well, because it's so fast, they're not thinking. >> charlie: in her own home. yes, yes. well, she's being -- i mean, they have been been -- it's been predicted. the weird sisters basically -- if you think about the time, people really believed in spirits and witchcraft. society was paranoid.

if you're told this ising going to happen, you're going to believe it. she's somebody who's, like, well, let's help it along a bit. >> charlie: how is it different what will be performed play in manchester at the church that was performed? >> well, rich because the actors have sat with it for a while. it's primarily the same cast. we have some additional new people, but the new people have inneinterjected a great truth t. this armory, the vast space, the heat that you enter, the stones that represent the pagan world, it's pulled the play nor, it's pulled it more and made it tighter in the same way. >> charlie: you walk in there, you think you're walking into history. >> mm-hmm. interesting way to put it. i think to answer your question, also, partly, what's happened in

addition to what rob is saying is that the space, the armory is allowed for the epic dimension in the play to be there and it also emphasizes the cinematic quality in it. the audience looks here and they see alex and she finishes a scene and they're focused and goes suddenly down here and it's a simple slight of hand theatrically but it's effective. it means closeup, wide shot, close up, wide shot, intimate spectacle is the dynamic of play. >> and the audience goes with that. they like the focus here. they don't want to look back and see what i'm missing. they want to stay where the focus is and shift back and forth. >> it's almost like it's edit but it hasn't because it's scenes that have merged so deeply. >> charlie: combat is an essential part of this because combat was such an essential

part of mcberkts right? >> yes. >> charlie: is there more to that than -- >> well, survival is at the heart. it's a very early -- >> charlie: it's critical. yes. and also they're a battle world of relative primitiveness which he who hacks longest and most manically wins. these spinning, he can tick, frantic -- i can tell you there's no acting required -- moments in this battle that just introduce the audience who frankly are also themselves -- no one with is ever going to get hurt, please, god -- but they are physically very, very near the danger and it's a real danger. sparks come off the swords. stuff happens and that immediately changes -- changes the atmosphere. they've just been wood by the sight of this beautiful woman doing her concentrated thing. and they come in also -- what i think is exciting at the armory is they come in to answer your we about what's different, they come in with a real sense of

event. they see the huge set and you really, you can somehow feel them kind of relishing it and it had a different atmosphere or listening. >> charlie: beyond the fact she's good, not evil, what do you like about lady macbeth? >> well, i love playing the journey,. >> charlie: her journey. her journey, yes. because if you think of her -- or at least my interpretation -- in the beginning, she's on her knees, lighting candles, praying for the safety of her husband. she doesn't know if he's going to come back. she's longing for the letters that are going to tell her what's happening. so from seeing her starting off in that respect and then very, very quick through sort of the -- the excitement of this cede deed that's going to just propel them, that give them something, that talk about

legacy, and they will have something that they can hold on to and be proud of, and they have no children. they have nothing else. and then just sort of -- the sort of slow dissent into loss, losing her husband, losing the great love in her life, the thing that is sort of the other half of her and just slowly -- >> charlie: but losing him in the end to death or madness? >> she wouldn't consider herself going mad, but it's just her not connecting. he starts not sharing with her, and she loses confidence then. you know, she's trying desperately to stay close to him, and he's starting to just do little things without actually informing her. that's not who they were before as a couple. it's that slowly starting to pull apart. >> charlie: do you believe as

harold bloom said and ken referenced in our earlier conversation that this is the happiest marriage in shakespeare? >> well, i think it begins like that. >> it's one of the most passionate. >> charlie: the sexual dynamic is there. >> especially the way that you guys play it, that you keep, no matter what is happening to you, you keep trying to find each other through it. >> yes, yeah. the dearest partner in greatness. >> charlie: dearest partner in greatness. >> she's equal. he adores her, worships her. that's how he knows who he is because of what he feels for her. he loves her. he's a relatively simple soldier, loves his wife, you've got the great honor, and then -- it's that conversation that if we stop that conversation, if i had been able to convince you, we'll proceed no further in this

business, let's take a few months of having the parties and all that -- >> if we were to use the evennality, when she opens up, that's the apple. >> charlie: that's the apple. because that's what suddenly makes him go. >> charlie: yeah. okay. >> charlie: okay what? we'll do it. >> charlie: we'll do it. because this matters to me, i'm telling you, this matters to me as much as kids do. so what do you think of that? and when he sees that from her -- >> charlie: more than anything i don't have. >> you know how much i want it. i'm giving you an image from taking this bone -- >> well, we had a child and he died. and that's it, no more.

that's why -- i mean, in terms of actors playing it, you know, if you are a very young mister and missus in a production, they can't have more children. she's barren. it means much more when you're of an age where, you know, it really matters, you are aware as actors of your ability to have children or not. >> and shakespeare still cleferl wrote bancroft with a son in the play and macbeth with the wife and children in the play, i think everyone else has the family. >> and that's the case where most people would qualify as then completely filling that person with unconditional love for that other person that you would never have the time to think about whether you're going to kill the president. >> charlie: you have never

bought into the superstition about macbeth? >> i was always cautious about it in my sort of daft irish way, like i will not walk under a lard, i will walk around. >> charlie: have you thought about macbeth? >> i've gone through phases. it's like playing the part, but i won't say it, just in case. i didn't believe it, but i won't be too cavalier with it but a little more bold. >> charlie: in scottish play. now that you brought it up, i feel like i want to say the name of the play in case in table colonel lams (laughter) a mixture of healthy respect and a little healthy irreverence about it is okay. but you have to remember with this play, you know, misfortune is sometimes associated with something that often takes place in the dark with lots of steps. there are many ways in which you can hurt yourself doing macbeth, so sometimes that superstition

has a practical justification. >> charlie: let me close with this because i do a lot of shakespeare here in terms of trying to talk about the characters because it is so rich, for me, as one human being who has a table to talk about whatever he wants the talk about. so i want each of you to answer this question. why shakespeare? why is shakespeare shakespeare? >> i don't know. i don't know why he's so sturdy. i don't know why he's still so profound. i don't know why other than -- >> charlie: there's only one shakespeare. >> there is. and why is that what, you know, me growing up in a small town in west virginia, why is shakespeare the one play that we studied in school? why was it julius caesar? why is it the only one? something instead of diminishing, he somehow stacks it all up and it continues to be

strong and vital somehow and i don't know why. i'm thankful for it, you know. >> charlie: it's good to do it. >> it's thrilling. whoever shakespeare was, i mean, i am continually just blown away by what a genius he was at such a sort of early time in the sense in our growth as a society, as a people. i mean, it's extraordinary the depth of feel and connection he seemed to have with the human spirit and the understanding. all i know is that i wish that he was watching our production, because i'm really proud of it, and i think he would be so proud of it. now, i would love him to see it, because i just think he would be so moved. i would really love it.

>> that would be a nervous night. apparently, he's in (laughter) he knows the play very well, by the way, so no paraphrase. (laughter) >> charlie: you especially. well, he consistently entertains, by which i mean he stimulates and provokes and makes us laugh and cry and goes beyond words. you know, there is an atmosphere in the plays that is con voakd and present in the words which are only words on a page but they trigger these explosions in the human imagination and in the human spirit, and, you know, the truth is he just repeatedly proves he's not just good for us, he's just good. >> charlie: thank you. great to have you. >> thanks very much. you. >> charlie: go see macbeth at the armory, if you can.

thank you for joining us. see you next time. ♪ captioning sponsored by rose communications captioned by media access group at wgbh access.wgbh.org

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