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Macbeth

Published Wednesday 18 October 2006 at 17:15 by Kevin Berry

No one will be twiddling thumbs or nodding off during this Macbeth. Its theatrical focus and its unrelenting dramatic power are almost overwhelming.

Gareth Tudor Price has elected to stage Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy in-the-round. He has trimmed the script and he uses just seven actors. The audience is in immediate contact and furthermore Tudor Price keeps all of the actors in view throughout the action. They exit and then sit on the edge, watching, brooding and whispering the prophesies.

The air is dank, the vertical shafts of light are frightening and the soundtrack, created by Stuart Briner, is a thundering, hammering, screaming nightmare.  

Characters are clothed in long leather coats and heavy boots, not a sign of tartan anywhere. Their physicality is brutal, their killings are sheer butchery. The stage might be raised but it is a bear pit.

The Macbeths are given a severe psychological examination. James Weaver plays Macbeth as a man in deep mental torment. He suffers agonising fits. His wife is clearly dangerous from the moment she appears. Not much subtlety from a mesmerising Fiona Wass, the woman’s ambition only thinly disguised. Her descent into madness is a gathering downward spiral. She walks around her husband again and again. The poise and the control are going. This is disciplined acting.

Matthew Parish’s Malcolm leaves the audience wondering. Macbeth might have gone but is life going to be any better under him? Probably not.

The school parties will learn much from this production. Other theatregoers will be thankful that they bought a ticket.

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