Star rating ** How boring can you make Macbeth? This is a question which needs to be seriously levelled at Lucy Pitman-Wallace's new production of Shakespeare's gore-fest, which opens the Royal Lyceum's autumn season in this co-production with Nottingham Playhouse. Because, while it starts off promisingly enough, with Liam Brennan's Macbeth and Allison Mackenzie's Lady M seemingly rekindling the fire of their relationship with the witches power of suggestion, it ends up in a passion-free zone in one of the least engaging Macbeths of recent years.
In some respects, going for understatement is a brave move. Brennan is a master of it, and his interplay with Mackenzie is pretty much the only thing the production has going for it. Initially appearing like an off-white nun, Mackenzie's Lady M is a social climber who gets in too deep, a neurotic with nowhere left to go. Beyond this, however, much of the sparring, slow-motion dinner party scenes and spectral visitations are just too casual. Having the witches lead the dead offstage doesn't convince as anything other than a device to get the next scene going.
The slate-grey circular fortress set seems to have been built for a studio theatre, distancing the audience from the Lyceum's proscenium arch, and the costumes look leftover from an Open University production circa 1972. All of which represents lost opportunities for a Macbeth that admirably avoids contemporary gimmickry.
Productions which attempt to get to the play's dark heart without recourse to such tricks are in short supply. If they're as dull as this, small wonder.
