11. Madách International Theatre Meeting

Duration

2 hours 20 minutes

“It is not a quick-frozen and pre-packaged, synthetic and antiseptic artificial horror, but real, organic terror: the blood is still warm, and it is spreading insidiously, it is viscous and contagious. It sticks in your mind and penetrates your imagination. The world of Macbeth is a nightmarish fantasy world”, wrote István Géher about Shakespeare’s play. In David Doiashvili’s Macbeth production, apart from some benches, the only objects on the stage (symbolising the see-saw of power and death), we see a skillful play with lights that seems to be saying that life is nothing but a constantly changing shadow, a tale told by an idiot. The actors are grinning cabaret figures performing a gruesome dance that reminds one of today’s politicians. The performance resembles a Bonny and Clyde story set in the Middle Ages that ends with the two protagonists clinging to each other in death. The Macbeth performance of the Tbilisi State Music and Drama Theatre has already been performed as part of several international festivals, and it has won several awards.

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Director David Doiashvili was born in Tbilisi, Georgia. Graduated from the Rustaveli State Institute in Tbilisi (studio of M. Tumanishvili). As a director works for theatres in Tbilisi and abroad. Among his productions are Tree by M. Doiashvili, Madame Bovary by G. Flaubert (the D. Alexidze Theatre, Tbilisi), Three Sisters by A. Chekhov, Salomè by O. Wilde (the K. Mardzhanashvili Theatre, Tbilisi). He also staged A Midsummer Night´s Dream by W. Shakespeare for the Royal National Theatre in London and The Crucible by A. Miller in the Playhouse Theatre in Leeds, Great Britain. Since 1998, Principal director of Tbilisi Music and Drama State Theatre.

All the aspects of the performance “Macbeth” such as directing, scenography, light design, unrealistically high level of quality and credibility of acting were acknowledged by critics and producers unanimously. David Doiashvili offered audience completely new vision of  “Macbeth” - one of the greatest plays of all times. As the result of the big success “Macbeth” got invitations to numerous international festivals and theatrical happenings. But the most impressive and significant was International Theatre Festival in Rijeka (Croatia), where “Macbeth” won nine nominations out of possible twelve including: best performance, best director, best actress, best actor, best scenography, best costume design, best music and it also became the favorite performance of the audience.

According to international critics, Georgian director David Doiashvili has justified the epithet of a young arising directing star. His interpretation of Shakespeare‘s „Macbeth“ leaves no doubt that the classic text is still pulsing with relevance. In Doiashvili's interpretation, Macbeth has every right to act as he did. His actions are a consequence of the regime under which he lives. And yet, in the end, the murder catches up with the murderer, because a person always has personal responsibility for his fate, despite all the despotism and the witches.

Usualy when thinking of Shakespeare what comes to one's mind is a heavy drama in archaic rimes. In Georgian performance, on the contrary, all of that is "blown into the air". Few benches on the stage as the seesaws of power and death, ingenious play of light showing that "Life's but a walking shadow, a tale told by an idiot, signifying nothing", and actors as grinning cabaret masters of a dance macabre, so much resembling today's life and politics. As the critics remark, politically, this Macbeth might as well been created in Georgia, where "no ruler is good enough", as says the director David Doiashvili, while aesthetically, this performance brought us back to the theater as the arena of endless magic swallowing us entirely.

Doiashvili transformed Macbeth into a spectacle full of scenic metaphors, visual opulence which played with the dark as an important element of the world, excellent symbolic solutions seasoned by lyric scenes which differed from purely aesthetic to characterizing ones. Georgian Macbeths, like some medieval Bonny and Clyde, cling to each other in death at the end. The result is an absence of any attempt at a realistic-theatrical illusion. This setup leads to fascinating and highly imaginative visual activity on the stage - implied, marked, physical and exposed.