Biuro Podrozy’s Macbeth on stilts with pyrotechnics and motorbikes was the talk of the town well before the show opened. They were last here with Carmen Funebre - an outdoors epic dirge about the Bosnian war some 12 years ago, which gave them audience and critical acclaim all over the world. And the buzz does not seem to have worn off yet.

Focusing on texture rather than the text, their reinterpretation of the ‘Scottish play’ is an operatic spectacle with moments of exquisite lyricism. Only a few familiar speeches act as narrative signposts in the tale combining elements of psychological thriller, World War II drama, domestic tragedy and ritualistic theatre, but we are never at a loss as to what is going on exactly. Particularly interesting is Director/Adaptor Pawel Szkotak’s reading of Lady Macbeth as a white-clad tyrannical house mistress with an obsessive compulsive disorder. In such a household the husband’s lawn-mower rattles with the sculls of his political opponents, and it is not difficult to see how all this could even spiral into a campaign of ethnic cleansing. On such a scale, the guilt-ridden moment in which Lady Macbeth attempts to get the damn spot out therefore affords us with a moment of naked vulnerability as she takes a candle-lit bath. Striking imagery abounds, and its effect is elevated even further by Malgorzata Wilczynska’s soulful singing accompaniment.

Deaths are represented by felled trees, entire castles are ablaze and messages travel on petrol in this carbon-conscious show in which you can still spot an odd spectator with a cigarette in hand. However its exhilarating theatricality enhanced by Krysztof Nowikow’s absorbing score is definitely worth any health and safety risk as it may well be a few years before you see anything like this ever again.