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.

Urged on by Niamh Cusack’s wickedly elfin Lady Macbeth, who at times, surely unintentionally, resembles Cherie Blair, he sets off on his bloody journey through hell, an ever-present large digital clock counting down the minutes to his doomsday.

Findlay’s two-hour production, beset by quirky directorial ideas, moves at great speed. It sacrifices the reflective poetry of the play, so that Eccleston throws off his “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow” lament as a passing cursory observation rather than a moment of inner despair, while projected captions spell out the stages of Macbeth’s progress and indecision as to whether the murdered Banquo’s ghost is an actual presence or a figment of his unhinged mind.

In a strangely uneven cast there is strong, if short-lived, support from Raphael Sowole’s Banquo and Edward Bennett’s Macduff and, throughout, Michael Hodgson’s porter-cum-caretaker watches over, commenting on and even stage-managing the action.

After laconically informing Macbeth that his wife is dead and answering to the name Seyton (get it?), he conducts him to his suicidal end. We see him finally sweeping the stage while the clock resets and the three child witches prepare for the action to repeat itself as the new king is crowned.

With some tuning, this Macbeth could bed in during its run. At present, though, it is clunkily awkward.

Runs until September 18. box office rsc.org.uk