Kathryn Hunter on Her Haunting and Scene-Stealing Witches Role in ‘The Tragedy of Macbeth’
variety.comStuart Miller Joel Coen’s “The Tragedy of Macbeth” is, among other things, visually gripping, a stark, haunting dreamscape that often seems to exist outside of time.
While the film is carried by Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, much has been made — justifiably — of Kathryn Hunter’s eerily limber witch: you can’t look away as she bends and contorts, calling to mind a real-life Smeagol.But the movie starts with a whiteout, and so we hear Hunter before we see her.
It pulls viewers in and reinforces the notion that this nimble performance (she is echoed into all three witches) is not merely a physical marvel or a gimmick.
Hunter’s clarity and her agility with her line readings sets the tone — riveting but ominous —for the film. “When Joel said, ‘We’re not going to see you in the first scene,’ I went, ‘Oh,’” Hunter says, re-creating the sound of disappointment. (Hunter, 64, will be new to most American filmgoers; she’s best-known for appearing in one Harry Potter movie.) “But it’s actually brilliant that you don’t see the witches at first because it makes you think about what is really there and what is not there.”An esteemed theatrical star in the U.K., Hunter was also grateful for the chance to have audiences focus first on Shakespeare’s words and her delivery of them. “Over the years I’ve been labeled a physical performer and I always say, ‘But what about the words?” Hunter says. “The shape of words is physical too, and the words and physicality must be completely synced up.
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