Macbeth

Synopsis

The Scottish Play - theatrical types consider saying its name to be unlucky! Thrust into power by his overwhelming desires and an over ambitious wife, Macbeth finds his only security is to murder and murder again. From "When shall we three meet again" to "is this a dagger I see before me" this is a powerful Shakespearean drama.

Our Review:

30 April 2010

Blood will have blood they say and there's certainly plenty of gore in Lucy Bailey's Grand Guignol-like take on the Scottish play. Right from the start when men with bloody torsos appear in front to the witches, this is play steeped in blood. There’s even an appearance by the Thane of Cawdor, bloodily despatched on stage for once.

In her programme notes, Bailey says that she and designer Katrina Lindsay have based the setting on Cocytus, the circle of hell reserved for traitors – a reminder that there three sets of traitors in this play: Cawdor, Macbeth himself and Macduff and Malcolm who have rebelled against the king.

Accompanied by Orlando Gough's discordant bagpipe music, this is is vision of a, literally, hellish Scotland that makes corporeal the one described by Macduff at the English court when he says. “O nation miserable/with an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd.”

While some recent productions (most recently last month's Cheek by Jowl's)...

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