Macbeth - Dock X London
/REVIEWED BY SEAN NAUGHTON
He was not for an age, but for all time. Ben Jonson’s oft-quoted acclamation of William Shakespeare speaks for itself. Jonson wrote those words in 1623. They apply with particular force to Macbeth. A mere three centuries later, GK Chesterton agreed: ‘[Macbeth] will certainly survive our age as it has survived its own; it will certainly leave the twentieth century behind as calmly and completely as it has left the seventeenth century behind.’[1] Chesterton rated Macbeth as the ‘greatest drama in the world.’[2] No justification is needed in 2024 to rave about the thing. And yet, Simon Godwin’s production acquires an added layer of portentousness, dare I say urgency, in light of three seemingly unrelated, seemingly superficial facts. In the first place, the London run ends on Holy Saturday, and Macbeth’s next stop is, wait for it, Washington DC.[3] Secondly, the Kennedy Center Opera House run begins just two days after an eclipse of the Sun. Thirdly, Macbeth is in army fatigues. This sounds serious.
These days of course, latter-day camouflage uniforms with associated military paraphernalia have become standard issue for Shakespeare productions, along with matching totalitarian goose-stepping militarist dystopias as settings. As someone for whom army and navy surplus was indispensable fashion street cred-back in the late ’70s, I’ve got no complaints. Having said that, with each passing day, the likelihood of seeing uniformed soldiers on the streets of London as well as on the stage at London’s Dock X seems only to increase. The combination of army uniforms and concrete bunkers and simulated explosions and genuinely alarming F16 sound effects – Please be aware this show contains strobe lighting, smoke and haze[4] – together with heavenly portents above the play’s final U.S. destination, forces me to conclude that this production of Macbeth may be our last chance for world peace. Bear with me.
The still-smouldering urban neighbourhood – enduring ongoing aerial bombardment – through which the audience passes to get seated, inevitably brings to mind the unspeakable horrors of Gaza. I was struck by a strong sense of this not being just one more UK revival of the Scottish Play. As I imagined it, Macbeth, having been roused from the depths of Hell to sound a last alarum here in Great Britain – in Liverpool, Edinburgh and London to be precise – is now about to undertake a mission of mercy to the U.S. capital. He’s determined that America too gets this final warning. With a concern reminiscent of the reprobate rich man who ignored the plight of Lazarus, Macbeth brings to his transatlantic brothers-in-arms a warning that he hopes might keep them from ending up in that place of torment to which he himself will return in the Summer. That’ll be after an as-yet-unconfirmed stop-off in Tel Aviv.
It was on 18th November that Macbeth first re-emerged – at the Depot in Liverpool. By this time, the world and his wife knew that we were witnessing a genocide in Gaza. Nevertheless, Britannia was still producing the highest per capita number of talking heads pretending that the mass extermination of Palestinians was really about heroic self-defence and/or hostage rescue and/or Hamas eradication. I have it on good authority that as far as Cawdor himself is concerned, it was Douglas Murray who proved to be the last straw. In light of the interview given just two weeks before Macbeth’s Liverpool opening, in which Murray condemns the planned pro-Palestine demo set to take place in London on 11th November, we can only sympathise with Scotland’s most psychotic fictional king as he heard these words from Scotland’s most sycophantic actual queen:
It’s Remembrance Day in the United Kingdom where we remember the dead of the two world wars and commemorate their sacrifice, of course a sacrifice of soldiers from the Commonwealth and around the world in defeating Nazism, and in my view this is a deliberate provocation of the British people and it should not be allowed to go ahead. Let me put it this way: either it doesn’t go ahead or it goes ahead and it will have to be countered because I don’t think the British public should have to put up with this. We should not have to put up with our national monuments being defiled. We should not have to put up with the Cenotaph being defiled; we should not have to put up with people marching through our streets calling for the new Nazism, the latest iteration of Nazism flying their new Nazi flags rejoicing in the latest murder of Jews.[5]
The lady – sorry Douglas – doth protest too much, methinks. Let’s face it, as slurs go, the N word is losing its potency. I mean, you’re nobody these days if you haven’t been called a Nazi or an anti-Semite in the last forty-eight hours. As a neo-conservative homosexual – or is that homosexual neo-conservative? – Douglas Murray has a twin-trigger antipathy to Muslims. As the former Associate Director of the Henry Jackson Society – whose list of funders reads like a veritable who’s who of the UK’s richest Jews[6] – it’s hardly surprising that Murray is one of the foremost apologists for the genocide. But Murray’s insistence on referring to Muslim marchers as the world’s most murderous Nazis, and Israeli Jews as the world’s most misunderstood neighbours, had Banquo suggesting that the poor fellow had once again eaten of the insane root that takes the reason prisoner. Then again, it’s unfair to offload exclusively on the practising homosexual Douglas Murray when no-longer-practising Home Secretary Suella Braverman has done so much of the heavy lifting in terms of gratuitous provocation of the bewildered British public and the former Scottish king:
This can’t go on. Week by week, the streets of London are being polluted by hate, violence, and antisemitism. Members of the public are being mobbed and intimidated. Jewish people in particular feel threatened. Further action is necessary.[7]
Macbeth, Directed by Simon Godwin
Which left all right-minded people thinking, “No, no, no, Suella! Further action is the last thing we need!” Mrs Braverman’s public safety warning about the toxicity of pro-Palestine protestors and her steadfast refusal to call for immediate inaction on the part of the IDF becomes more understandable when we learn, courtesy of the Jewish Chronicle, why Mrs Braverman (neé Fernandes) gets so upset about opposition to the genocide:
Part of the reason for her anger is that her husband, Rael, is Jewish. “The Jewish community is our community,” she said. “My husband is a proud Jew and Zionist. He’s lived in Israel. We have close family members who serve in the IDF. My children will be raised with a strong sense of Jewish values and their Jewish heritage. We enjoy Friday night dinners at our mother-in-law’s.”[8]
Far be it from me to begrudge the Bravermans an enjoyable Friday night dinner, but on her Easter week trip to Israel, undue concern for the people of Gaza having no dinners – make that no food – is a charge of which Mrs Braverman is entirely innocent. Referring to the seven World Kitchen Centre aid workers killed, Suella’s continued grovelling at the feet of the Jews must be making even her dear mother-in-law suspicious:
“They were brave men who were putting themselves in harm’s way,” Braverman said, “and it is right that Israel is carrying out an urgent investigation. But it did not intend to kill or injure these people, and this is not a reason for Britain to soften its support for Israel, which is fighting an existential battle against a murderous death cult.”[9]
Whoa, that’s fightin’ talk, Suella. I understand that Hamas speaks very highly of you also. But seriously, and in a bid to lower the temperature, let’s consider Suella’s death cult charge in somewhat less incendiary terms. Let’s leave aside talk of death cults, and consider St John Paul II’s unimpeachable phrase – the culture of death – and ask ourselves which people in this world are most committed to promoting and/or practising the culture of death in all its manifestations? What about genocide? Just before Macbeth made the transfer from Edinburgh to London, the ICJ had already concluded that it’s plausible that the Jews are committing a genocide. What about abortion? I reckon the Jews have really outplayed the Palestinians on that score. In his book, Aborting America, Catholic convert Dr Bernard Nathanson provides all the gory details. See also E. Michael Jones’ account.[10] More recently, the World Jewish Congress trumpeted its record of achievement in securing, amongst a litany of other culture-of-death causes, the ‘right to choose,’[11] whilst the outcry of Jewish organisations in the U.S.,[12] at what they consider the baneful effects that the overturning of Roe v Wade was going to have on Jewish religious practice, affirms the ongoing commitment of the Jews to the promotion and the provision of abortion. Gay “marriage”? Yet again, Joe Biden has failed miserably to give the Palestinians the credit they deserve. Referring to the cultural shift that normalised the hitherto unconscionable notion of gay “marriage,” good ol’ Genocide Joe had to give most of the credit to the Jews:
Think — behind of all that, I bet you 85 percent of those changes, whether it’s in Hollywood or social media, are a consequence of Jewish leaders in the [film and TV] industry.[13]
As for trans ideology, I realise that the names Hirschfield, Steinach, Benjamin, Spack and Ehrensaft may sound Palestinian, but these are, in fact, just a few of the notable Jews who’ve worked tirelessly to promote the idea that a man can indeed become a woman, or vice-versa. Now, to preclude accusations of my just picking on the Jews, let it be said straightaway that the two most rabidly pro-abortion parliamentarians in the UK are Dame Diane Johnson and Stella Creasy MP, neither of whom are Jewish. Their latest in a long line of pro-death amendments – attached to whichever health or criminal justice bill happens to be going through parliament – includes for Dame Diane, a call for the removal of any limit[14] of any kind on either timing or method of abortion (including provision right up to birth of DIY abortion drugs by way of telemedicine), while at the same time Stella Creasy wants the removal of any requirement on the part of the mother to report the death of either a pre-born or newborn baby:
Stella Creasy’s amendment, if it became law, would also repeal Section 60 of the Offences Against the Person Act [1861], which is currently used to make it illegal to hide the body of a dead newborn baby, including in circumstances when the baby has been killed through infanticide.[15]
Stella Creasy may or may not be involved in witchcraft – I have no idea – but let’s just say that Ms Creasy’s amendment is not going to make it any harder to obtain that sine qua non of the discerning Weird Sister’s larder, namely the “finger of birth-strangled babe” (Macbeth, 4.1.30). What’s striking is that both Johnson and Creasy have very close ties to the parliamentary lobby group, The Labour Friends of Israel: Dame Diane is vice-chair, whilst Ms Creasy is the “partner” of the Jew, Dan Fox, a former director of the same organisation.[16] What about euthanasia? Is Esther Rantzen – arguably the UK’s most vociferous campaigner for assisted-suicide[17] – a closet Palestinian? Was it a Palestinian lady who recently called for euthanasia in Ireland, to complete – alongside gay “marriage” and abortion – that hat-trick of essential freedoms that Ireland so badly needs? Nope, that’d be the Jewess, Janie Lazar.[18] Now to be fair, a genuinely eloquent anti-euthanasia voice in the UK is the Jewess Melanie Phillips, but Melanie, who has a home in Israel,[19] denies claims of famine in Gaza and characterises the Israeli assault on Gaza not as genocide perpetration, but genocide prevention:
Why do you swear at this? Why do you dismiss it? Why do you call the defence of mass murder ‘collective punishment’? Would you have called it ‘collective punishment’ when the Allies bombed Germany? You would have said it was a defence against Fascism and Nazism![20]
No Melanie, I’m sorry, but we have to call it collective punishment. Two wrongs don’t make a right, right? Whatever the Weird Sisters say, two fouls don’t make a fair, right? Thanks to the work of E. Michael Jones, more and more people are now recognising the fire-bombing of German cities and the post-war ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans[21] for what these atrocities are, namely the collective punishment of the German people. Melanie has considerable form when it comes to the justification of collective punishment. Her other job seems to be to demonise those fellow Jews who, to their eternal credit, are prepared to speak out. Referring, back in 2008, to Melanie’s role as the UK’s Alan Dershowitz, it’s clear from Johann Hari’s report that Melanie cannot be criticised for lack of consistency:
The journalist Melanie Phillips performs a similar role in Britain. Last year a group called Independent Jewish Voices was established with this mission statement: “Palestinians and Israelis alike have the right to peace and security.” Jews including Mike Leigh, Stephen Fry and Rabbi David Goldberg joined. Phillips swiftly dubbed them “Jews For Genocide”, and said they “encourage” the “killers” of Jews. Where does this come from? She says the Palestinians are an “artificial” people who can be collectively punished because they are “a terrorist population”. She believes that while “individual Palestinians may deserve compassion, their cause amounts to Holocaust denial as a national project”. Honest Reporting quotes Phillips as a model of reliable reporting[22]
In any case, enthusiasm for and promotion of the culture of death seems to be something of, dare I say, a defining feature of the Jews – a group which, needless to say, does not include all Jews – as a political force. Which may explain why Washington DC is the next stop for Macbeth. To borrow Dave Chappelle’s grammatically unsettling description of Hollywood, and apply it to Joe Biden’s White House, “That’s a lotta Jews.”[23]
Three Witches or Weird Sisters, Macbeth
But what about Macbeth at London’s Dock X? Whatever about the location or choice of the next destination, the first thing to say is that – outside of Sacred Scripture and Catholic teaching – Macbeth is the clearest repudiation of the culture of death ever written. Leaving aside its provision of my perfect – and arguably the only possible – excuse for going to the theatre on the Monday of Holy Week, Macbeth is the greatest parable ever written for an apostate people mired in the culture of death. So much so, I am here proposing that as preparation of the Catholic Flock for Good Friday, the Catholic Church should mandate attendance at Macbeth as a religious obligation for the beginning of Holy Week. Rooted securely between Palm Sunday and Fig Tuesday, Macbeth Monday would provide indispensable moral medicine. And besides, between the triumphant waving of palm branches on Sunday and the cursing of the fig tree on Tuesday, a mobile forest on Monday would seem eminently suitable. But in all seriousness, on Good Friday, we commemorate the New Adam, the King of the Jews, adorned with His crown of thorns, sacrificing His life for the salvation of the world; on the preceding Monday why not meditate on the Old Adam, the would-be King of the Scots, sacrificing the rightful king’s life for the salivation of his wife? I’m not sure how His Excellency Archbishop John Wilson, Archbishop of Southwark, is going to respond to my suggestion, but as referred to above, GK Chesterton has given full backing to the proposal:
And yet I still think that the greatest drama of all is that in which the throne of destiny is shaken for an instant. I think the greatest drama in the world is Macbeth. I think Macbeth the one supreme drama because it is the one Christian drama; and I will accept the accusation of prejudice. But I mean by Christian (in this matter) the strong sense of spiritual liberty and of sin; the idea that the best man can be as bad as he chooses. You may call Othello a victim of chance. You may call Hamlet a victim of temperament. You cannot call Macbeth anything but a victim of Macbeth.[24]
Macbeth is a liturgy for the lost children of England, a penitential service for the people who can’t go to confession and who won’t go to mass and who don’t go to church. It’s a requiem for the 11 million of our own aborted children. For an age and a people growing weary of the gospel of equality and diversity, and the endless possibilities of self-actualisation, Macbeth presents – in words like unto the most sublime of prayers – the realities of sin and perversity, and the ever-present possibility of eternal self-destruction:
Now o’er the one half-world
Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
The curtain’d sleep; now witchcraft celebrates
Pale Hecate’s offerings; and wither’d murder,
Alarum’d by his sentinel, the wolf,
Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design
Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,
Hear not my steps which way they walk, for fear
Thy very stones prate of my whereabout
And take the present horror from the time,
Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives;
Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives.
2.1.49-61
We’re reminded of Our Blessed Lord’s words as He enters Jerusalem on Palm Sunday: “I tell you, if these were silent, the very stones would cry out.” (Luke 19: 40). As Peter Milward SJ explains, Macbeth provides a parallel to the events of Holy Week, with, by way of a further example, Our Blessed Lords’s call to Judas echoed in the words of Macbeth as he musters up the will and the courage to murder the king:
Above all, in the beginning of the seventh scene, we find Macbeth leaving Duncan at his last supper, as though with the words of Jesus to Judas echoing in his ears: “That thou doest, do quickly.” Now he adds an “if”, as though weighing the words in his mind: “If it were done when ‘tis done, then ‘twere well It were done quickly.” In John xiii:30 we also read: “And it was night”, as we may also imagine was the case with Macbeth.[25]
Dock X is a purpose-built “warehouse” theatre in Surrey Quays – served by Canada Water tube station at the east end of the Jubilee Line – in London’s regenerated docklands. The steel grey theatre itself looks like a cross between an over-sized shipping container and a budget-built holding bay for prisoners on remand. The entrance is a windowless black door – flush with the windowless metallic side – and easily mistaken as the abandoned back entrance, the very kind favoured by death squads or the secret police. Surrey Quays Shopping Centre is not what it used to be – it’s a classic of those 1980s shopping malls that’ve long since lost their shine, now languishing between inevitable demolition and lingering liquidity. At the same time, I continue to be seduced by the aura of promise that pervades the newly built or half-finished apartment blocks, forgetting momentarily that the exorbitant rents partly explain the ongoing decline of the shopping centre.
My contention that this production of Macbeth may be the harbinger of world peace is only bolstered by the historical resonance of this London location. If the fate of the world as we know it now centres on Washington DC in the dying days of the American Empire, it’s fair to say that the formation of the world as we know it began right here in Docklands:
The tidal current runs to and fro in its unceasing service, crowded with memories of men and ships it had borne to the rest of home or to the battles of the sea. It had known and served all the men of whom the nation is proud, from Sir Francis Drake to Sir John Franklin, knights all, titled and untitled – the great knights-errant of the sea. It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her rotund flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen’s Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests – and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith – the adventurers and the settlers; kings’ ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark “interlopers” of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned “generals” of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth!... The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.[26]
There was a time when Joseph Conrad’s description filled the heart with that same spirit of adventure, enlivened by the untold exotic and indeed erotic possibilities of following that river into the mystery of the unknown Earth:
I’m in the coasting trade, and rarely out of sight of land. It’s the jolly times on shore that appeal to me, as much as any seafaring. O, those southern seaports! The smell of them, the riding-lights at night, the glamour![27]
Long before the latest assault on Gaza, we realised something went badly wrong. Conrad offers this account…
[…] This is just an excerpt from the June 2024 Issue of Culture Wars magazine. To read the full article, please purchase a digital download of the magazine, or become a subscriber!
Articles:
Culture of Death Watch
Glazer’s Choice by by Dr. E. Michael Jones
Features
How Jews “Love” Christians by Fr. Francesco Saverio Rondina, S.J.
Reviews
Macbeth - Dock X London by Sean Naughton
(Endnotes)
[1] Chesterton, G. K. Edited and with Introduction by Dale Ahlquist The Soul of Wit: G. K. Chesterton on William Shakespeare (Dover Books on Literature & Drama) Dover Publications. Kindle Edition, p73
[2] Ibid, p88
[3] https://www.shakespearetheatre.org/events/macbeth-23-24/
[4] https://macbeththeshow.com/venues/london/
[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xat11AWkJiw
[6] https://www.academia.edu/12964616/The_Henry_Jackson_Society_and_the_Degeneration_of_
British_Neoconservatism_Liberal_Interventionism_Islamophobia_and_the_War_on_Terror
[7] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/nov/12/suella-braverman-calls-for-further-action-against-pro-palestine-marches
[8] https://www.thejc.com/news/politics/police-must-understand-that-jews-do-count-says-braverman-cj4kf8qj
[9] https://www.thejc.com/news/politics/aid-convoy-strike-was-a-tragedy-but-we-must-stand-by-israel-says-braverman-xttvcfg0
[10] Jones, E Michael The Jews and Moral Subverion (2016) South Bend: Fidelity Press, location 463-618
[11] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtaL5xaSxcE
[12] Ron Kampeas, "Jewish groups gear up to battle abortion bans after Roe overturned," The Times of Israel, June 24, 2022, https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-groups-gear-up-to-battle-abortion-bans-after-roe-overturned/
[13] https://apnews.com/arts-and-entertainment-movies-united-states-government-974f8e9179014185a6f1d455005539af
[14] https://righttolife.org.uk/johnsonabortionamendment
[15] https://righttolife.org.uk/abortionamendments
[16] https://www.thejc.com/news/stella-creasy-lashes-out-at-al-jazeera-over-smear-of-jewish-partner-qe5gkauy
[17] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2024/feb/29/uk-law-on-assisted-dying-a-mess-says-esther-rantzen
[18] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T-MOE1WD84
[19] https://www.thejc.com/news/community/israel-is-fighting-for-civilisation-says-melanie-phillips-e8bsc6cn
[20] https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1877738/Question-Time-SNP-Israel-Gaza
[21] https://culturewars.com/news/the-ethnic-cleansing-of-german-minorities-after-the-war-2
[22] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-loathsome-smearing-of-israel-s-critics-822751.html
[23] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw4OapDkniA
[24] Chesterton/ Ahlquist, p87
[25] Milward, Peter SJ Shakespeare’s Apocalypse London; St Austin Press (2000), p48
[26] Conrad, Joseph. Heart Of Darkness: The Original 1899 Edition (A Joseph Conrad Classic Novel) Global Publishers. Kindle Edition, pp3-4
[27] Grahame, Kenneth; Moore, Inga; Artists, Various. The Wind in the Willows (Illustrated Audio-eBook) NesBits. Kindle Edition, location 1636
[28] Jones, E Michael Barren Metal: a history of capitalism as the conflict between usury and labor South Bend: Fidelity Press (2014) p26
[29] Ibid, 411
[30] Heart of Darkness, p4
[31] https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/roe-wade-jewish-rights-freedom-religion-b2117385.html
[32] https://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/news/24128867.review-macbeth-show-dock-x-london-docklands/
[33] https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-media-silence-over-a-study-which-found-high-numbers-of-abortions-are-coerced-and-unwanted/
[34] Culture Wars Magazine, April 2024, p38
