Macbeth | Giò Forma

«The art of creating suspense is also the art of involving the audience, so that the viewer is actually a participant» argued Alfred Hitchcock.
Thus the direction of Davide Livermore and the set design by Giò Forma studio (who also contributed to signing a special poster, as a sneak-peak for the dream-like journey the audience will undertake), they lead the audience into vortexes and labyrinths, they raise them from the ground and make them sink; like power does.

«Staging Macbeth in 2021 must deal, not only with Shakespeare's immense work, the impressive score of a young Verdi and the intriguing adaptation by Francesco Maria Piave, but also with this difficult moment for theatres, for Milan and for the world» is the premise that lead Cristiana Picco to open up the opportunity to do something never done before. No more barriers of time and space, we enter into a dream-like world, live. «It is a topia that changes into a U-topia, Dys-topia or Hetero-topia - she continues - it is not an environment subject to the force of gravity nor does it fit to its logic: below, above, left and right merge into a single creation. In the Verdian Macbeth there are no distinctions between real or unreal spaces.»
The fil rouge of this dramaturgy is the broken-down skyscraper which, since the city of Babylon, has been a symbol of the mad human tendency to want to reach the sky and go beyond it. Livermore's extreme fidelity to the original libretto leads him to translate the original narrative’s horizontality into dizzying verticality.
The skyscraper is a point of domination over the city, over engineering, over the force of gravity itself, a multiplication of space and economic power, the result of the financial hedonism of the a few powerful that are visible to all. A privileged point of view that allows us, detaching ourselves from the ground below, to observe the twisted and complex thoughts of man in a redundant sequence of corridors, of which the facade of the Scottish Court Tower is an emblem. This is how Macbeth and his wife become eclectic and eccentric architects, bulimic collectors who stage their ever-growing madness.
It is the skyscraper that welcomes all the scenes, becoming a vertical Macbeth with a Verdian soundscape.
Verdi, through the events of Macbeth, shows us what happens to a society when it is oppressed by a dictatorship. Verdi spoke to his own contemporaneity in a crazy, violent way, with an extremely extraordinary impact. Today it is essential for us to restore this strength, to restore the strength of a living theatre, taking a text that was written for its contemporaneity and bringing it back into ours.
It is rare to find a work that speaks in the present tense like Macbeth does.
«It becomes a powerful and daring “hyper labyrinth” that crosses time and places. It breaks through the ceiling of the Scala to launch itself into the sky of Milan, New York, London or any other city.» Giò Forma explains during its quest for details, statues and symbolic architectures to "steal" around the world, to bring back to the stage and tell each of them a story. Starting from the universe of Pietro Portaluppi and the mysterious facade that was never built, designed in 1926 for a building in Corso Sempione. «Perhaps stimulated by the moment of suspension between the two wars or the national euphoria, in that moment, an obsessive, funny and brilliant Portaluppi chooses a precise symbol: the labyrinth - says Picco - which is perfectly suited to the Shakespearean genius». And then come the show stoppers like the floors that tells the story of oil spills in the sea. Then there are nods: the art pieces owned by the couple are highly symbolic, a Dantesque black panther in the style of Bugatti, a feminine quote by Arno Breker of disturbing beauty and Giacometti's slender, dematerialized, dissolute and losing human presence that contrasts with the winning Discobolus of Mirone, already loved in the past by the greedy for power. The whole artistic team tried to make art through our contemporaneity, we were immediately committed and aware of the fact that the game had to be won also from a televised point of view. In this dynamic, it is difficult to distinguish between the actual stage design and the virtual sets that extend and dialogue with it. With dizzying imaginative
power, surprising suggestions and dramatic tones, the world moves around the characters and visibly shifts right before our eyes.
With this phygital-design intervention, the team brought the television experience to life in a more captivating and exclusive way. Digital and augmented reality «allow us to enter Macbeth's head and experience his nightmares». «The obsessive dynamics of the protagonists are framed not only by the many objects chosen and designed - concludes Picco - but takes shape in the bas-reliefs of the facades and in the interiors broken down and re-assembled in the name of dramaturgy"

«The whole world is a stage», as Shakespeare would say.