Back from a mini tour of Yorkshire and Stockport and cheering for supporting act Indignation Meeting
Speed sabotages subtlety
GORDON PARSONS sees a rapid-fire production of Macbeth that allows no pause for thought
Macbeth 26/3/18
ALISTAR FINDLAY is mesmerised by this multiple ‘Visions of Scotland’ assault on the audience’s eyes and senses
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MAYER WAKEFIELD has reservations about the direction of a play centered on a DVLA re-training session for three British-Pakistani motorists
New releases from Steve Knightley, Jupiter & Okwess, Jason Palmer, Lisa Knapp and Gerry Driver, Kin'Gongolo Kiniata, Ingrid Laubrock/Tom Rainey, Dan Sealey, Simin Tande, PAZ
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
A uncomfortably misogynistic authorial voice that sometimes seems to lack insight troubles FIONA O’CONNOR
Macbeth
Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
UNDENIABLY, there's an operatic quality to all of the Bard’s tragedies. The individual actor playing the protagonist controls the impact of the play and Christopher Eccleston's Macbeth is no noble Scottish captain but rather an unimaginative, bullet-headed northern squaddie.
That is, until he meets the weird sisters who, in Polly Findlay’s production, are three seemingly delightful little girls playing “innocently” with their dolls.
With the possibility of seizing the crown embedded into his mind, Macbeth can’t wait for the wheelchair-bound, geriatric Duncan to leave the scene naturally. Speedily, he gets on with seeing the old man off.
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