This might seem an obvious choice as a non-comedy Shakespeare for outdoor performance, if only because of its relative brevity, powerful momentum and familiarity. Accordingly, Edward Kemp’s production makes for an oddly pleasant evening’s entertainment, while never really exploiting the play’s tragic possibilities.
The general theme is one of rusty, post-industrial squalor – as if the modern world has reverted to feudalism following some catastrophe. The set is dominated by four half-collapsed shipping container units, while the witches are ragged Goth bag-ladies, mixing up their potions in blazing oil drums for cauldrons. Antony Byrne’s Thane makes a sturdy centre to the plot, in which the fallibility of vision is a recurring theme. For the start of the ‘Is this a dagger’ soliloquy, he is staring not into thin air, but straight at one of the Weird Sisters. Dragged back from her dreams of ambition by the sudden appearance of her husband, Sarah Woodward’s Lady Macbeth has to touch him to convince herself he’s real. The witches, by contrast, never seem anything more than what we can see.
The later battle scenes are enjoyably energetic, with Kemp making the most of the auditorium, but it’s the interior scenes that lose out. Nods, though, go to Mark Meadows as a suave, knowing Banquo and Peter Duncan (yes, the one-time Blue Peter presenter) as a stolid, surprisingly moving Macduff.
