Summary 
At times fascinating adaptation of the Scottish tragedy, modernized and adapted by a Japanese company to the urban gang warfare underworld of today's Tokyo. Audacious visuals, a loud rock music score, and some unique concepts amid disturbingly graphic violence but undone by a disconcerting and pervasive sense of parody and humor.
Design
Directed by Takeshi Kawamura. Lights by Yoshiaki Kuroo. Sound by Shoji Hara-shima.
Cast
Fujiki Matsumura (First Macbeth), Hiroyuki Ebihara (Second Macbeth), Takeshi Kawamura (Third Macbeth), Yoshie Sakamoto (Lady Macbeth), Isao Mizuguchi (Banquo), Seiji Aito (Macduff), Takeshi Miyajima (Police Officer), Yukiko Kami (Lady Macduff), Aiko Maki (Nurse), Mayumi Kudo (Maidservant), Takaaki Ogura (Malcolm), Yuji Murata (Donalbain), Yoshinori Oka (Lennox), Keishi Wada (Ross), Yoshie Okada (Seyward), Shinichi Matsumoto (Fleance), Emiko Yoshimura (Third Witch), Tsutomu Matsuura (Assassin), Hiroyuki Igarashi (Assassin), Makoto Kasagi (Assassin).
Analysis
Japan's Daisan Erotica makes its American debut with A Man Called Macbeth at the International Theatre Festival of Chicago. In this anti-conservative modernization of Macbeth, director and adaptor Takeshi Kawamura applies Shakespeare's western characters and themes to the decadent underbelly of today's urban Japan. The results are at times overwhelming: the production is jarringly loud, garishly lit and at moments excruciatingly violent, and the cultural fusion - often wildly erratic - is in part a parody of traditional Shakespeare. Although A Man Called Macbeth is almost always fascinating in its conception and execution, the conventional interpretation of internal descent into horror and madness has nonetheless been subjugated to cartoonish contemporary entertainment.
Kawamura's deconstructionistic script, segmented into twenty-six distinct but seamless scenes, is enacted with raw energy in Japanese; although no simultaneous translation is provided - prompting increased attention on gesture and expression - an English synopsis of each scene is provided via headset. Only one earpiece is worn, however, so the accompanying music, which ranges from Strauss and Beethoven to Japanese pop and raucous punk-rock, can be fully appreciated: for example, the disturbing opening scenes of graphic violence with guns and knives are expertly choreographed with ballet-like fluidity to the melody of "Swan Lake," and the discovery of Duncan's murder is punctuated with electric guitar power chords. The production is staged almost entirely with a dozen black and white tatami mats - each emblazoned in Japanese with (ironically) "perfection and wisdom" - variously employed on the floor or simulating walls. At one point, the mats, held vertically by concealed actors, represent bumpers in a kind of grotesque pinball machine, as the bloodied, bullet-ridden Banquo staggers from mat to mat before finally perishing.
Framing the action of the entire play is a small set on the front right of the stage: a chain-smoking police detective, starkly lit in noir smokiness, alternately beats and interrogates an exhausted Macbeth, who confesses his downfall in episodic flashback. The setting for A Man Called Macbeth is modern Japan's seedy urban subculture, specifically the criminal underworld of Yakuza gangsters, with Macbeth's consuming ambition to be "Boss" rather than King. Historically honorable in their moral pursuit of justice, like the young Macbeth, the mobsters have over time become corrupted and debauched, paralleling the older Macbeth, and are now merely common street killers. For example, the murderers Macbeth hires are grotesquely deformed, physically as well as morally: one is a bald, leering cripple with a maniacal cackle who drags his lame leg behind him; another is a blind man, green-complected and greasy-haired, wearing a shabby overcoat; and the third is their gnarled, knife-wielding, one-armed leader. After the ferocious assault on the pregnant Lady Macduff that results in her crying infant baby being brutally silenced with an ear-splitting pistol shot, the three killers exit in repellent peals of self-satisfied laughter.
In the production's most striking innovation, Kawamura utilizes three actors to depict Macbeth's ambitious progression and accompanying moral descent. The first Macbeth is a young, volatile street hood in a pin-striped suit, playfully teasing Lady Macbeth as she chases him with a broom. The second Macbeth emerges dramatically, immediately after the murder of Duncan and a psycho-sexual encounter with Lady Macbeth, rising from beneath their bed-covers, appearing much older and emotionally hardened. He grows increasingly brutal, power-hungry and paranoid, finally becoming the third Macbeth after the slaughter of Banquo and Macduff's family. Portrayed by Kawamura himself, the final Macbeth is a decadent, middle-aged drug addict, physically bloated, emotionally bankrupt, and mentally insane; in a particularly vivid scene, he kneels atop his desk, a rubber tube tied around his upper arm, injects himself with heroin, and shouting hysterically, fires a pistol haphazardly at terrified henchmen. All three Macbeths are easily distinguishable from the rest of the cast, as they are all in appropriately bloodless white-face. However, with three distinct physical presences for one character, the scorpions within Macbeth's mind are necessarily externalized, and are presented in intensely grotesque images of violence and decay that permeate the rest of society, more a cultural disease than a personal tragedy. Even the traditionally good-hearted Lennox and Ross are depicted as depraved - Lennox is long-haired, giggling and hyperactive, while Ross is unattractively greasy and obsequious - and only Banquo and Macduff exhibit any dignity or inner strength. The physical difficulty of Macduff's climactic duel with Macbeth - he is essentially trying to destroy an inherent societal evil - is effectively staged, as the older Macbeth is joined by the younger versions of himself, and Macduff is forced to combat all three. The pervasiveness of the three Macbeths is evoked in the production's final scene at the police interrogation table. The guilt-ridden and overwhelmed Macbeth - "aweary of the sun" - overpowers the detective, steals his pistol, and shoots himself in the head. He is accompanied in his death throes by the other two versions of himself, and once together on-stage, they all finally succumb.
The three witches, portrayed as kimono-clad bar denizens, are also in white-face, and are conceptually related to Kawamura's three Macbeths: only the third witch remains the same, the other two alternately becoming a version of a Macbeth character, which in turn becomes a witch. The third witch, in a wheelchair, has hideously distended arms, almost twice their normal length, which she holds in front of herself like a zombie; chillingly unpredictable, she is at one moment lethargically entranced and staring, and the next demonically frenzied. The witches' lair in this production is a sleazy public bath-house occupied by wretched urban outcasts, and the cauldron is an enormous hot-tub. The witches' orgiastic display of the long line of Banquo's descendant kings is disconcertingly silly: the future monarchs emerge mockingly from the tub in black speedos, as they dance and contort spasmodically, mime bathing, and mug comically to the audience in a carnival-like sequence. Other scenes also border on the flamboyantly parodic, and are equally as unsettling, fueled by the clash of cultural perspectives: Duncan, on the night of his murder at Macbeth's residence, entertains his entourage with an awful karaoke performance, crooning like a lounge singer into a microphone; the porter is a young warlord hammering out boisterous punk-rock on an electric guitar; and when Macduff decapitates Macbeth in their final battle, the "head" is represented by a bouncing bloody basketball that is passed about by the opposing forces in a bizarre game, until Macduff's "team" finally wins. Less theatrically ostentatious, and far less startling (although still farcical) are Malcolm's feverish escape from Dunsinane in comic drag, Fleance's absurd childishness being portrayed by an obviously adult actor, and the screeching, banshee-like insanity and manic dance of Lady Macbeth.
Because of the commingling of cultural elements and Kawamura's decidedly undogmatic theatrical approach, very little about A Man Called Macbeth is traditionally Shakespearean. Several sequences, however, manage to effectively meld the two cultures, such as the ceremony surrounding the second Macbeth's succession to leadership of the mob: the formal Japanese ritual, which involves the exchanging of cups among the gang leaders, is accompanied by Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" and features the first Macbeth spotlighted at the interrogation table, spasming and slumping in his chair, while the second Macbeth stands stage center, pistol in hand, to receive applause and take leadership.
The scene involving the murder of Duncan is the most memorable of the production, presented with a powerfully poetic intensity. Macbeth stands stage left, deep in soul-searching thought, considering homicide. Center stage but deeply inset is the sleeping Duncan. Both men have an attendant standing nearby with a basket of cherry blossoms held high over them on a long wooden stick; the baskets are shaken gently so that a few petals fall prettily about them. The cherry blossoms symbolize beauty and purity and innocence, and as Macbeth makes his crucial decision, both baskets are shaken less gently, so more blossoms fall. As Macbeth nears Duncan, long-bladed knives in his hands, a serving woman approaches with a large feather fan, and the shaking increases, allowing more and more of the petals to tumble down. When Macbeth attacks Duncan, stabbing him repeatedly with the knives, the baskets are shaken in a frenzy. Cherry blossoms cascade over the two struggling men, fanned about by the woman, creating a beautiful, swirling pink-and-white flurry, until finally the baskets are empty, Duncan is dead, and Macbeth is doomed.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.10, No.3, Summer 1992.