David Tennant, the former Dr Who actor, is putting on a new performance of Macbeth, in which every member of the audience will have earphones so they listen to even the quietest whispers from the actors. He has spoken of how this will help with the famous scene where Macbeth is confronted by witches who tell of his fate. He feels this is very difficult to stage successfully for modern audiences, with little or no belief in the supernatural. I am not entirely convinced that this is the case, but it is certainly true that there is less recognition of anything beyond ourselves in modern society. His solution is for the witches never to appear on stage at all; the audience will simply hear voices and left to work out for themselves the reality of what they are hearing. At that point, I began to warm to the idea. Many years ago, a hymn writer described the call of God as the “still small voice of calm”, picking up episode describing the experience of the prophet Elijah in the Old Testament. Equally, I wonder what voices those who do evil think they hear? Perhaps the play is onto something important is dramatising the inner voice?
Rev David Poyner