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:

20 April 2007

This Macbeth is not a production about which anyone with more than a passing acquaintance with, or feeling for, Shakespeare is likely to be equivocal.

It’s many and manifest faults proclaim themselves from the rooftops as do, unfortunately, most of the cast, Jude Akuwudike (as Banquo) a notable exception to the near universal ranting and roaring. Also endemic is the tendency by the cast to break lines at the expense both of the rhythm and the sense of the text.

The production, in fact, falls at the first hurdle with a dumb show of director Conall Morrison’s devising which prefaces the play proper. Macbeth (played by Patrick O'Kane) is shown leading the massacre of men, women and even an infant. On his departure, three of the slain women rise to their feet and take on the role of witches. What ensues is their revenge on Macbeth for the Herodic slaughter.

This has three, fatal, consequences for the play: it robs Macbeth of free will and r...

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Latest User Review

Nick Sansone - 8 July 2007:

Either this production was a brilliant attempt to elucidate the line "sound and fury, signifying nothing," or it was just poorly conceived. Amidst the blood and banging, the story of man's moral decay at the hands of ambition was utterly absent. Morrison seemed so eager to imprint his fetishistic motif of baby slaughter onto Shakespeare's narrative that little of the original text came through....

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