Macbeth, Trump, Putin, Vučić… Is there a difference?

"Oppressed land, my land," sings South Korean tenor SeokJong Baek, Verdi's famous aria "Patria oppressa" from the opera "Macbeth," and as the magnificent hall of the Munich Opera House erupts into a multi-minute ovation, I wonder if among the 2.200 visitors to the performance, there is anyone else besides the two of us who is crying?! Some Russian, Israeli, Hungarian, Serbian. Because only such people, with recent experience of dictatorship, autocracy and tyranny, can "sympathize" with Shakespeare's Scotland, where the bloodthirsty King Macbeth unleashes a reign of terror, so much so that one is not even allowed to cry. Not even for one's murdered son. Or as in Verdi: The homeland betrayed, the throne tarnished, the son murdered! Sounds familiar.

At least to the masterful director Martin Kušej, a Slovenian by birth, an Austrian by home and birth, who as such has no personal experience of life in communism and Eastern European transitions, but reads and understands them brilliantly. Kušej's miraculous performance, in which music, singing and theater intertwine, shows how this masterpiece should be read today, 400 years after Shakespeare's Macbeth. On the one hand, as with the English writer, Kušej's Macbeth is a saga of ambition, power and violence, but with a completely different epilogue. For Shakespeare, the tragic story ends happily, so after the tyranny of the Macbeth couple ends, a new dawn is born, peace and prosperity, with Macduff and Malcolm, while with Kušej the situation is the other way around. I guess in accordance with today's world and order. In the end, as German criticism notes, Kušej's Macduff liberates Scotland with his army, but it is more of an anticlimax than a heroic climax, with a strong and contemporary message that violence cyclically alternates and reproduces itself, before turning into catharsis. As in Shakespeare.

As I watch the scene, where a sea of ​​white skulls lies on the floor, I imagine Gaza, or Mariupol, I see thousands of killed, wounded, exiled, death and cataclysm, in the game of the powerful for the throne. Global, regional or national. While in the black tent, the place of evil and committed crimes, which lies on the field of those white skulls, the White House, the Kremlin, Andrićev venac, Vila Gorica, or some similar place of today's princes and tyrants is depicted. Instead of Macbeth, it's as if I'm watching Trump, Putin, Vučić, Orban, Erdogan, Đukanović or Mandić...

The visual or theatrical effects of Kušej's Macbeth not only enchant you, but also make you imagine. They push you to question the future of civilization after three hours of scenes dominated by eerie darkness, violence and psychological disintegration, as indicators of the chaos that the world is going through today. When Kušej puts Banquo's severed head in a plastic bag, or when the choir dresses in white and lays it on the skulls, and then hangs naked male bodies on three or four pulleys, a picture as if from some slaughterhouse, you simply feel how this violence touches you, and associates it with what you have experienced, and with what you see every day in live broadcasts of destruction and death. Kušej's Macbeth is not some mad Scottish king from the 16th century, but the personification of today's autocrats and bullies, who kill and subjugate their own citizens, and not just "others'". The destroyed hospitals in Gaza, the stories of unfortunate people who lost their loved ones, 110 children killed in a school in southern Iran, "sorry, it wasn't intentional," says the inscrutable Hegset, or the murdered critics and opponents of the tyrant Vladimir, such as Navalny, Politkovskaya, Nemtsov... And it doesn't just have to be bloodshed. Tyranny is also Vučić's violence against students, the rector, the university, society and citizens. Because all these tyrants adhere to the motto of Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth: If you want power and authority, there are no doubts or doubts, just trample and kill until the job is done. And then, as one of his schoolmates once described Vučić to me, he then shows how he defends (conquered) power. And so on for 14 years. Or every day for 5.110 days.

Another provocation by Kušej and a modern interpretation of Shakespeare is reflected in a very important detail: instead of the original witches who, through the madness of power, lead Shakespeare's Macbeth to actual madness and self-destruction, the Austrian-Slovenian director introduces children to the stage. As critics note, the child witches symbolize the innocence that possesses and destroys Macbeth, leading him through prophecies and madness. They appear as childish, pale characters in black costumes who perform "hellish games", representing the barrenness of ambition and Macbeth's inner childhood as the cause of the evil he sows as a king.

And isn't it similar in the film "The Apprentice" (by Ali Abbasi, a Danish director of Iranian roots) which in 2024 similarly shows how ambition and manipulation slowly crystallize into Trump's style of government: never show weakness, never admit a mistake, dismiss accusations and use spin and half-truths instead of facts. As with Lady Macbeth, so with Trump, Orban, Vučić, Putin or one of the Tehran mullahs, emotions and narratives are used as a means of power - with the emphasis on people and institutions softening or adapting to it, rather than resisting it. Just as in one scene, when their kingdom begins to collapse, Macbeth himself concludes: What is life but an empty fairy tale, full of noise and misery, told by idiots!

Instead of the classic heroic symbol of catharsis and renewal, Birnam Forest appears in Kušej as part of the general devastation and chaos, it is the darkness that swallows the king's castle, whereby the director deviates from Shakespeare and pessimistically concludes that the new government does not erase the traumas of tyranny. On the contrary, violence is only regenerated for us. Or as reviews of Kušej's direction conclude - power is not defeated, but inherited, without real redemption or change, which reinforces the realization of the illusion of control and the lasting trauma of tyranny. Long live August 30, I almost exclaimed, in the middle of the great hall of the Bavarian Opera.

In translation, we painted in vain. Isn't Vučić the best confirmation of the aforementioned thesis? After the trauma of Milošević's tyranny, for a decade and a half, Serbia and the region are living a new drama and tragedy with him in the role of Macbeth. Where Ana Brnabić would be ideal as Lady Macbeth, even though she is not related to the king in a partnership. Catharsis, if it ever was, was stopped by the murder of Đinđić, and the trauma of power and madness once again conquered society. It seems to me that history is repeating itself when I listen to Lady Macbeth from the PES parliamentary group, who explains to us: "you can't tell me that you work for the state and in the name of the truth, but who knows who". And Radmila Vojvodić would envy her, with that "not a grain of wheat to the enemy". And isn't that confirmation of Kušej's interpretation that evil is not eradicated, but only repeated and regenerated. Or as the lady herself (Macbeth) would admit, both in Shakespeare's play and in Munich's staging of Macbeth: "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" That is: "Out, damned spot! Out, I say"! The cry of the queen in a suicidal feast when she realizes that the blood, or the crime committed, cannot be washed away. As well as spoken or repeated nonsense or threats.

Lest MP Nedović misunderstand me, this is just a metaphor: blood, in Kušej's directorial interpretation, is a symbol of guilt and moral breakdown, which are recycled and repeated even after the alleged "liberations" of Ibar. All of which reinforces his criticism of contemporary political systems, in which the "winners" only continue the destructive chain, sometimes even making the drama darker than their overthrown predecessors.

Kushai's ending to Macbeth, critics note, fundamentally diverges from the original Shakespeare/Verdi text, where the victory of Macduff and Malcolm brings catharsis, the restoration of order, and moral redemption (of Scotland). In the original, Malcolm is proclaimed king with a heroic tone and hope for the future, while Kushai transforms the finale into a visionless wasteland - Malcolm and Macduff enter a castle full of skulls and darkness, Birnam Forest swallows everything, suggesting that the cycle of violence and tyranny continues.

This change emphasizes the pessimistic message about the illusion of power and the legacy of trauma, undermining Shakespeare's hope for justice and freedom.

And as the curtain slowly falls after a twelve-minute ovation for the ensemble and conductor (Italian Andrea Batistoni), despite the harsh message and pessimistic, Kušejev vision of the future, the emotions still prevail with satisfaction due to the power of the creative act and the beauty of true art. Even when we networked and saw that it was refreshing in Hungary too! Orban is finished, and let Vučić get ready. Death to fascism, art to the people!