Commentary meme: Macbeth

[john_amend_all]

lost_spook wrote:

Macbeth!!!

Macbeth, it is probable, was the last-written of the four great tragedies, and immediately preceded Antony and Cleopatra. In that play...

(Obviously, I mean TTR/Storytime! Macbeth).

[Record needle scratch] Oh, that Macbeth.

Fortunately, I don't have to spend a lot of time explaining why it was written. That's a matter of public record.

Prologue

One of the first things I decided on was the two-threaded story structure. At the time I started writing, we'd just been discussing what you might find in Nameless (if you're not careful). Having Izzy running around Nameless trying to set right what Jamie put wrong was an extension of that thread. Obviously she couldn't be allowed to succeed until the play was (almost) over, but it kept her busy and me amused.

Initially I experimented with having the interludes between each scene, rather than each act, but quickly came to the conclusion that it would have made the structure too rigid; it would have involved copious amounts of padding to keep the two halves of the story in sync. It also loosened the parallels between the events in the play and the events in Nameless, but that wasn't to be helped.

And this is also the sequence that unleashed Jamie's Angels on the world. If I'd known what I was starting...

Isobel:
Oh, that beach scene. I don't think I managed to read a single page of my book without someone throwing sand at me or tickling me or picking me up bodily and dumping me in the sea.

Gia:
That happened to all of us at least once. You and Zoë were the ones who did it to me, as I recall.

Samantha:
Remember when Jamie chucked Victoria in? While she was wearing her best dress?

Victoria:
Oh, that was dreadful!

Jamie:
You'd just dumped a load of wet seaweed on me while I was sunbathing. What was I supposed to do, let you get away with it?

Isobel:
And those eels! Of course, I'd bought enough for six and then there were only three of us left to eat them.

Samantha:
You didn't have to eat them all. You could've just chucked them away or given them to the seagulls.

Zoë:
I can't bear to see food go to waste. I think it's because I live on a space station; you can't afford to waste anything in space. Of course when Jamie's around waste food isn't really a problem.

Jamie:
Are ye saying I'm some kind of a glamasair?

Victoria:
Does that word mean 'someone around whom no sandwich is safe'? Because if so, I think Zoë has a valid point.

Act One

When it came to casting, Turlough was the obvious choice to play Macbeth — as he complains in Act 2, he's always getting roped into stupid murder plans. It was then straightforward enough to cast Tegan, the most forthright companion from that era, as his wife. As for the equivalent usurpers in the outside world, Jamie was already marked as the narrator. Not only would he be keen to dispense Jacobite propaganda, but this whole thing came about because I'd named Macbeth as his toddler counterpart's favourite story. Sam as Jamie's partner was something of a fluke; I hadn't realised until I wrote the beach scene that all the other Angels would have their own reasons to turn Jamie's offer down.

With Tegan and Turlough cast, Adric as Banquo followed quickly, and that led easily to Psycho Nyssa as his killer. As for the witches, I went for characters who very obviously exhibited the attributes of the maiden, the mother and the crone. Among the various soldiers, the Brigadier ending up with the substantial role of Ross was a coincidence; it could just as easily have been Group Captain Gilmore.

Turlough:
I hope you noticed that I tried a lot harder than the real Macbeth to nip all this murdering business in the bud. Do I have 'will kill anyone for bribes' tattooed on my forehead?

Tegan:
I think it's just your open and honest face. And, to be fair, when we first met, you did agree to kill the Doctor.

Turlough:
I thought better of that almost straight away. Whereas you got more and more involved with the plotting as we went along.

Tegan:
That was just acting!

Turlough:
You convinced me, anyway. Are you sure that 'hostess' gag wasn't getting to you, even a little bit?

Tegan:
You couldn't resist it either. By the end you were making just as many suggestions as I was.

Turlough:
It's a weakness, I'll admit. If people insist on coming up to me and telling me their stupid plans I can't help pointing out all their mistakes in nitpicking detail.

Interlude 1

While there isn't a full Deleted and Extended Scenes package, there are a couple of sequences that were written and then cut. The first of these was Izzy's escape from the warehouse, which was then intended to be interleaved with Act 1. But since it didn't advance the plot in any way, I just stuck a fire escape on the building and gave her a shortcut.

The street with pastel-coloured buildings owes something to Faversham in Kent, that being the seaside town I'd most recently visited at the time.

I don't have to disambiguate Jenny, do I? Jenny Wilson from Seven Keys to Doomsday, rather than the Doctor's Daughter or the maid from Family of Blood.

Izzy:
I don't see why I couldn't tell Jenny apart from Zoë. They may have the same face but they wear different clothes, they do their hair differently, and their voices sound different.

Jenny:
Well, in the shop I was wearing uniform and the light wasn't too good. And you weren't exactly calm and rational, were you?

Zoë:
Also, Jenny only ever shows up to be mistaken for me. It's about the only characteristic she's got. In other respects, she's rather...

Izzy:
Jenneric?

[They groan.]

Zoë:
I mean, what do we know about her? She's the sort of plucky girl who gets to be a companion, and she's doing her A-levels. That's it.

Jenny:
I suppose I should thank Terrance Dicks for giving me even that. At least it means I've got a canon age, give or take a year. Unlike some people.

Zoë:
Hey!

Act Two

Having cast Turlough, I knew that at some point I'd have to give him one of those scenes where the Black Guardian tries to keep him focused on the task at hand. In the original play Macbeth has more or less resolved to do the deed at this point, so Turlough's renewed havering was borrowed from Act 1.

The major casting decisions for this act were the Porter, and Macduff. Somehow, from the suggestion that the Porter's drunk, I jumped straight to the conclusion that Jo was the one to play her. But since Jo is not, in fact, a grumpy nightwatchman, most of her lines got rewritten more or less from scratch. I cast the Ninth Doctor as Macduff with an eye to the parts after his family have been killed.

If in my Storytimes Richard Mace seems to be closer to the Victorian version from the radio plays than the Restoration version, that isn't surprising — I heard the radio plays much more recently. And when he and Jago start striking poses and overacting, they're channelling Mossop and Keanrick from Blackadder. Fortunately we got through the whole play without anyone having to do the hot-potato ritual.

Since Turlough confidently stated that Macbeth doesn't have detectives in it, it became inevitable that detectives would show up. I was most amused to discover The Captive Sleuths, which by crossing Doctor Who with a vast number of fictional detectives means that you can have just about any detective you like in the Round.

Turlough:
So it was someone's bright idea to give me a prop dagger and send me to pretend to assassinate a seasoned warrior. Who had a very large, very real, sword and was a bit hazy about the difference between fact and make-believe.

Richard Mace:
Tush, my good sir. To an experienced thespian such as myself, such an incident is a mere bagatelle. Why, when I was performing in front of the Earl of Shrewsbury, to my horror a peacock ran onto the stage.

Jo:
Um, why would that be a problem?

Richard Mace:
My dear young lady, any true actor would know that one can never allow peacock feathers on the stage, be they in a costume, a prop, or the dressing of a set.

Turlough:
I fail to see how offending some acting superstition is comparable to being nearly eviscerated by a homicidal maniac with a claymore.

Richard Mace:
Ah, I could tell you tales.

Jo:
So is it true that it's unlucky to say 'Macbeth'?

Richard Mace:
Aargh!

[Receding hurried footsteps. Door slams.]

Turlough:
There goes your chance of winning the Thespians' Favourite Companion award.

Interlude Two

This part was mainly an excuse to describe two locations I'd wanted to add to Nameless for some time: the alliteratively-named Factory of Fun, and the paranoia-inducing Memorial Gardens. Most of the elements in the Factory weren't consciously borrowed from anywhere in particular, though on reflection they're reminiscent of the Fools' Guild in Ankh-Morpork. The raspberry-blowing chairs, on the other hand, are straight out of the original The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin. Zoë's (mis)use of the Comic Sans font is, sadly, all too prevalent in this day and age.

The Memorial Gardens are, as far as I know, entirely my own fault. They're a bit more salubrious than the sort of seaside locations I'd been envisaging for Izzy to find Victoria: a windswept bus shelter on the promenade, or some run-down café. In the original draft, the scenes happened in reverse order and Victoria accompanied Izzy to the Factory of Fun. I swapped them over as part of a general overhaul of Victoria's plotline.

Izzy:
I certainly wasn't expecting Shakespeare to show up like that. Neither was the author, from what I've heard.

Shakespeare:
Makes sense, though, doesn't it? The thing about the Round is you can find an expert on almost anything there.

Izzy:
And if I hadn't run into you I don't know what I'd have done. Sit on the doorstep of the crêche, probably, and bite my nails waiting for the screams and the explosions.

Shakespeare:
So I turned up to help move the plot along a bit. Fair enough. You know what they say: When in doubt, have a man come through the door with an arquebus in his hand.

Act Three

As part of the research I did for this play, I read the Macbeth section of A. C. Bradley's book Shakespearean Tragedy (whence comes the opening passage of this article). Bradley points out that in the play, Banquo seems to abandon his investigation into the murder between Acts 2 and 3. But Adric isn't deterred so easily. And, when you need a time-travelling detective, who could be better than Sam Tyler? Well, Superintendent Cheviot, but I don't think he's ever been in a Doctor Who crossover.

I put Izzy in as Hecate based on scene 5 in this act, and came up with the how and the why of it later. She may think she's trying to bring the play to a stop, but as Shakespeare points out in the next interlude, things aren't that easy.

Tegan:
I don't see any pangs of conscience in this one. Getting quite a taste for murder, weren't you?

Turlough:
That's only because I'd realised I wasn't getting out of the story any other way.

Tegan:
And you didn't have to get your hands dirty. Just send off a few subcontractors.

Turlough:
Who promptly make a complete mess of the job.

Tegan:
Considering you got chased all over the castle and had to have the narrator bail you out, I don't think you're in a position to give lessons on murdering people.

Turlough:
It would all have worked out if Nyssa hadn't decided to pursue her hobby at the same time.

Tegan:
And whose fault is that? You know the theory that the third murderer's supposed to be Macbeth in disguise? If you'd been there like you should have then Nyssa wouldn't have had a part to play.

Turlough:
If you think that would have stopped her I have a bridge on Squornshellous Zeta to sell you.

Interlude Three

The main point of this interlude is to come up with an excuse for why Izzy, despite having a good long run-up and Shakespeare more or less on her side, can't actually stop the play. It also gets the idea of using magic into Izzy's head, which pays off at the end.

Izzy:
Were you really trying to flirt with me?

Shakespeare:
But of course. Who would do otherwise?

Izzy:
Cut that out. I'm surprised you didn't compare me to a summer's day. You must've tried that on half the girls in the Round.

Shakespeare:
It nearly worked on Martha, and on Rose;
  Victoria almost caved in to my rhyme.
How Sarah would have answered, no-one knows
  Had Harry not been with her at the time.
Donna led me a pretty little dance
  But in the end, my verse did not prevail.
With Barbara, I didn't get a chance;
  Ian told me that my plan was sure to fail.
With Peri, and with Vicki, and with Mel
  I failed to close my hand on victory.
And when I tried that savage heart to quell
  Leela was more inclined to fillet me.

I'll carry on, ignoring all these quirks.
One day, I'll find a girl on whom it works.

Act Four

The main Sam Tyler sequence (aka Act 4 Scene 0) was a very late addition; it's the major, if not the only, bit set in 11th-century Scotland that doesn't correspond to a scene in the play. It also has the helpful effect of giving Izzy and Victoria enough time to prepare for their appearance in Scene 1.

Not only can Sam not tell if he's dreaming or back in time, he also can't tell which play he's in, coming out at various points with lines from Othello and Hamlet. He's less bonkers to scratch information on the floor with a knife — this was a genuine mediæval practice when building cathedrals, though the floors would have been plastered first.

The Witches' spell is one of the best-known and most-parodied parts of Macbeth, so I approached it with some trepidation. Fortunately the canon is full of weird objects that can be used as ingredients, and some of them even rhyme and scan.

One of the tensions when in a Storytime is between the desire of the original story to be told, and that of the cast not to go along with it. In Macbeth, this manifests itself as cast members refusing to be killed when the script tells them to. Several were chosen with that aim in mind (including Yrcanos and Benton) but Steven and Sara were the main ones.

At the end of the previous act, Samantha boasted that they'd leave the nursery so tidy that no-one would know they'd been there. That sort of boast only gets made for one reason, and sure enough she gets to rue it here. Not having Jamie's experience with the toddlers, Sam doesn't realise just how much damage they can cause, given half a chance. The 'magic potion' not only enlightens her, but leaves a mark on the ceiling that can't be washed off, just in time for the hand-washing scene in the next act.

Mickey:
It's great to be given a big part like Malcolm. Shows I can do more than just the comic relief.

Ninth Doctor:
Nah, Ricky-boy, you were still the comic relief. You just made people laugh by overacting instead of cringing and falling over things.

Mickey:
That's not true! I got to do lots of heroic stuff!

Ninth Doctor:
Like what?

Mickey:
... Let me get back to you on that.

Interlude Four

I play slightly with the guideline in the TTR FAQ here that characters can choose whether or not extended canon applies to them; Zoë flips between her TV characterisation and her audio characterisation between scenes.

The other extended scene was in this interlude; Zoë wondered if, since they were still supposedly witches, they could cast spells outside the confines of the story. They couldn't.

Izzy's scenes with the three foot black rod were written out of order; the scene where she buys it was written after the one where she uses it. The rod itself is from the ur-adventure game Colossal Cave, perhaps with a little influence from Lilith's wand in Witches Abroad. I hadn't been aware of the Revd Horace Carter Hovey before writing this story, but was very pleased to find him.

Isobel:
One of the nice things about Zoë being from the future is she's got a lot of films that haven't been made yet.

Zoë:
Or never will be. I don't think the timeline I come from is quite the same as the one the Whoniverse is following now.

Victoria:
I should hope not. The current timeline may be under constant threat from alien invasions and the like, but at least we're spared those terrible Professor X films.

Isobel:
Hey, I thought Eddie Izzard was great.

Zoë:
I don't know what they were doing casting Gareth Gates, though. Since when did coming second in a talent show qualify you to play the Professor's companion?

Act Five

Macbeth was the first time I'd written anything substantial with Samantha Briggs, and I decided not to abbreviate her forename. This isn't for any canon reason (she doesn't seem to mind being called Sam in The Faceless Ones) but simply to avoid confusion between her, Sam Tyler, and Blonde Sam Jones.

Blonde Sam and her friends turned up the moment I read the line 'Let every soldier hew him down a bough.' In this day and age, with protestors chaining themselves to ancient woodlands left, right and centre, that was pretty much the first thing that came to mind.

The brief cutaway, where Izzy gets picked up by Jabe, is the last vestige of the original idea of switching between the play and Izzy's story at frequent intervals. And, of course, it's a way to include actual moving trees in the story.

Samantha's increasingly breathless MeanwhileBackAtThes are a reference to the Goon Show episode "The Treasure of Loch Lomond". In the actual show, as here, the steam baths in Edgware Road play no other part in the proceedings.

Having been inserting various snippets of blank verse throughout the play, I found the affliction that I visited on Jamie and Samantha all too plausible. It strikes them shortly after the play's ended, though everyone's too preoccupied to notice until the epilogue.

Tegan:
Some author decided it would be hilarious for me to jump off the castle. And if that wasn't enough, he put a trampoline at the bottom rather than a crash mat, so he could have a bouncing Tosca gag.

Turlough:
Of course, once you'd done it Samantha had to do it as well, to prove she wasn't a coward. And after that we couldn't keep you two off the trampoline between scenes.

Tegan:
She's still got a weird hangup about me. I think she must've had a bad experience with a flight attendant once.

Turlough:
I'd be inclined to put it down to your charm and good humour.

Tegan:
Thanks a bunch. I'm going to make a point of enjoying the bit where you get blown to pieces.

Epilogue

The holovid that Isobel, Victoria and Zoë are watching is intended to be loosely based on Russell Thorndike's Doctor Syn novels. Syn's career as a pirate is covered in the first book; doubtless the studio started by more-or-less adapting that book, and then cranked out lucrative sequel after lucrative sequel without reaching the start of the next book.

To paraphrase a discussion I saw many years ago on radw: "In Flash Gordon, Brian Blessed played a king who shouted at people. And in Doctor Who, he played a king who shouted at people. And in Blackadder, he played a king who shouted at people. But don't get the idea that he's typecast. In I, Claudius he played an emperor who shouted at people." Which is a roundabout way of saying that Augustus, as he appears here, is the Brian Blessed version. I'd previously put him in a drabble (We'd All Perish, in which Peri decides he's "cute") to make him eligible to enter the Round.

As if I hadn't put in enough doubles in the play already, Dalziel and Pascoe (who have no right whatever to be in the Round) show up. Because they were once portrayed by Hale and Pace, Michelle instantly grants them admission as Harvey and Len.

When Gia retrieves Jamie and Samantha, she asks why their clothes have gone green. Some time later, I realised she should have added: "It can't be St Patrick's Day. With a name like Kelly, I'd know."

Gia:
Can I point out that T-Mat doesn't work the way it's shown here? If you don't have a booth at both ends whatever gets transported loses its coherence and you end up with a rapidly expanding cloud of plasma. So there's no way I could have kidnapped Izzy in the first place, far less swapped her with Jamie and Samantha.

Zoë:
I suspect the Theory of Narrative Causality had something to do with it. Jamie needed an open-ended teleporter, so that's what you had available that day.

Victoria:
Anyway, I'm very grateful to you for saving them. Otherwise they'd have been turned into frogs.

Jamie:
That wouldn't have been so bad. Ye'd just have had to give me a wee kiss to change me back.

Samantha:
What about me?

Jamie:
Well, after Victoria had kissed me and turned me back, I'd have kissed you.

Isobel:
And by then, you'd doubtless have come up with some excuse to kiss the rest of us as well.

Jamie [grinning wickedly] :
Who says I need an excuse?

And that about wraps up my commentary, such as it was, on Macbeth. Thank you for reading it. If there is a moral, it would seem to be not to do something as rash as embark on writing a long-format Storytime. I've certainly learned my lesson on that score. Oh yes. No question about it at all...

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

This is very impressive. I now know how many bits I missed. Heh. :-)

And I love the character commentary boxes. Shall I go away and stop making you write things about Macbeth?

[john_amend_all]

I'd prefer it if you stayed: you're the only one who suggests anything at all :-) And we got character commentaries out of it, which have got to be worth something.