Goneril and Regan in King Lear, the witch Sycorax in The Tempest, and Tamora, the vengeful queen of the Goths in Titus Andronicus, are among Shakespeare’s darkest women characters. But the most powerful and complex is the ambitious, manipulative Lady Macbeth, who lures her warrior husband into committing regicide and usurping the throne of Scotland.
You might describe her as an alpha female.
But, racked with guilt when her bloody strategy goes horribly wrong, she takes what she views as the only available exit strategy: her own life. Her childlike parting words are unbearably moving: “Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.”
Among those who have tackled the role for the Royal Shakespeare Company are Judi Dench, Vivien Leigh, Helen Mirren, Harriet Walter and Sinéad Cusack. Now the part has been conferred upon the Northern Ireland actor Valene Kane, in a new production on the main stage of the company’s Stratford-upon-Avon home.
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For Kane, the daughter of the former Down Gaelic footballer Val Kane, who grew up in the Border town of Newry, this high-profile opportunity must have landed as a real wow moment.
“Absolutely, a huge wow”, she says. “I do think that sometimes the universe gives you gifts. After 15 years of getting a lot of rejection and a lot of pain, you build a kind of trust muscle, that what’s meant for you won’t go past you. My new mantra is ‘Rejection is protection,’ so when there’s something I’m desperate to get and I don’t get it, I think there’s a reason for that. But I have always wanted to play this part, always.”
Given her own history, it’s natural to assume that she has invested into the role some of the grit and determination she has shown throughout her personal and professional life.
“That’s 100 per cent true,” she says. “In the audition with Wils” – Macbeth’s director, Wils Wilson – “I remember saying, ‘I know this woman. I know what it’s like to struggle and push, to have ambition that’s greater than the people around you and to do the things that other people don’t do.’ After working so hard, it feels like the most magical moment right now, to be doing this play – at the RSC! And to be doing it alongside Reuben as Macbeth,” she says, referring to Reuben Joseph, who recently played the title role in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s award-winning musical Hamilton in the West End of London.
“I’ve had bad experiences in the past with leading men, because I can be quite an opinionated force, and sometimes that can be hard on the dynamic on set. But Reuben is one of the most phenomenal actors and men I’ve had the pleasure of working with. From the start there has been an ultimate sense of safety between us, like free-falling. We’ve leaned into each other and explored the extremities of these two passionate human beings. We’ve been able to go into difficult areas because we’ve had the other as our parachute and our rock.”
When I see anyone who is like a little mini-me I really want to help them, because nobody was there to help me
With major film offers now coming at her, Kane can be forgiven for feeling that her success vindicates her refusal to follow her parents’ preference for a legal career and, instead, to head for drama college in London. But the experience was not all she hoped it would be.
She left the Central School of Speech & Drama full of optimism, only to find herself alone and unsure of what to do next. She recalls that she had nobody with whom to share her fears. She felt unable to unload them on to her parents because, naturally, they would try to persuade her to go home.
“For years I suffered deep, deep anxiety. Eventually, I grew tired of the way it dominated my life and ran the show. Now I’m sober; I meditate; I get up early and go to bed early; I keep to a really strict diet. Anything that contributed to the problem, I eradicated it. However, I’m also aware it’s the thing that pushed me to achieve, achieve, achieve, keep pushing, keep taking the knock-backs, so in a strange way I don’t want to let it go entirely. I don’t ever want to become apathetic. But I am a huge advocate of protecting your mental health.”
Her self-prescribed treatment seems to have worked. Her bright smile, the lightness in her voice and her relaxed body language are evidence that, these days, she is in a good place, happily married to the English actor and writer Ed Cooper Clarke and living her best life in London. She regularly mentors young actors at her old drama school, in whom she sees much of her old self.
“When I see anyone who is like a little mini-me I really want to help them, because nobody was there to help me,” she says.
She shares with them her experience of working multiple menial jobs until, slowly, work began to trickle in. In 2009 she gave a highly praised performance as Girleen in Martin McDonagh’s The Lonesome West, followed by a lead role in Ivan Kavanagh’s award-winning film The Fading Light.
Her breakthrough arrived in 2013 via Alan Cubitt’s acclaimed BBC crime drama The Fall, in which she played Rose Stagg, the first victim of Jamie Dornan’s psychopathic serial killer, Paul Spector. It was a role requiring emotional stamina, intelligence and intensity.
She now finds herself at the centre of a different kind of chaos in Wilson’s intense, elemental production, where the boundaries are blurred between the natural and supernatural, love and hate, joy and despair.
I think there’s something savage about Northern Ireland women, and I have channelled this into the role
“The chaos Wils has created flows through the show. I love the choices she has made, like swapping the gender of some of the male roles, which allows the script to open up in different ways. She’s chosen to use Lady Macbeth’s own name, Gruach, which personalises her and takes her beyond being just somebody’s lady. She’s often portrayed as evil, venomous, a demon. I never saw her that way. She’s an outsider who just wants more for herself and the man she passionately loves.
“People watch the play and see two Machiavellian characters. But as an actor you have to see the humanity in every person you play. We’re all a product of our upbringing, our own trauma, the place where we were born and grew up, the peers we had.
“Back in the day around the place where I lived, there was always a sense of danger, a faint feeling of chaos; people were made to feel slightly ‘less’. At drama school people around me thought I was a bit too much, but I had to be. Nothing was ever handed down to me. Time and time again I was rejected and knocked back for roles, but I always got up and came back even more determined.”
“Growing up in the fields and mountains of home, I feel deeply in tune with the natural world. When I’m in the wilds, with my feet in the earth or seawater on my skin, I can sense Gruach’s connections to otherworldly elements and the supernatural energy of the play.
“I think there’s something savage about Northern Ireland women, and I have channelled this into the role. I’m the only Paddy in the cast; all the others are Scottish. Making Gruach Irish is a clever choice. It labels her as an outsider. At first, not having worked with any of the cast before, I did feel like the outsider. But in acting you use everything to your benefit; whatever is thrown at you in life you bring to the character. The acting in this show is incredibly intense. There’s nothing ‘classical’ about it. It’s a guttural, painful, powerfully ‘real’ piece of theatre.”
Macbeth is at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, until Saturday, October 14th
