Criticism Parody
I want to begin with an anecdote. Some children, at one point or another, have a fear of
the dark and things that go bump in the night. When I suggested to my academic community
that I wanted to write about Macbeth being about babies afraid of the dark my ideas were met
with hesitation. While it has long been argued that separate from one another babies and
darkness are strong themes in Macbeth bringing them together seems to present a problem for
audiences and scholars alike. Babies are inherently thought of as joyful and things that bring
happiness and light into the world, while darkness clearly negates those things. Why then can
these two themes be seamlessly juxtaposed on the stage during productions of Macbeth? It is the
lighting. The lights, or lack of lights, on a stage during a performance can bring together two
seemingly opposite things and combine them to create a powerful force.
This notion of two themes at opposite ends of the spectrum coming together to create a
new way of looking at a performance is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination,
however, issues with lighting and how that lighting brings together opposing themes creates an
unexplored territory of criticism in regards to live productions of plays where lighting itself can
be considered as crucial as the lines being spoken. It is my intention to look at a particular
production of Macbeth during which lighting was used to create a space in which the lightness of
babies and the darkness of murder comes together to create a gray area that informs not only the
experience of the audience, but the acting choices made by the cast and director as well. These
choices can in turn play a part in how we as aural audiences experience a piece visually on the
stage as well as on the page.
During a 1987 Off-Broadway production of Macbeth, director Hans Sleumugh tossed
away his roots in original practices and brought down the house lights, sort of, for his
production. As the production moves through the scenes the lights are continuously lowered and
lowered and lowered. Pitch black settles in during Macbeth's famous dagger speech and what
can be seen by the audience and the actor alike is a glowing dagger, but it is the conversation that
occurs in the previous scene, in near total darkness, that joins babies to darkness. While Lady
Macbeth chastises Macbeth for is indecisiveness she claims she would dash out the brains of her
new born suckling babe if that is what she had sworn to do. The lighting effect on this speech is
two fold: it enhances the darkness of the deed that Lady Macbeth is urging Macbeth to complete
and the lack of lighting, ironically, highlights the considered second murder, that of the suckling
infant.