Macbeth at Olympic Theatre

There were two major versions of Macbeth on in London in 2024 and I chose to see the Ralph Fiennes and  Indira Varma version rather than the David Tennant and Crush Jumbo one. There were various reasons for this including the unusual staging of the first at Dock X and having a David Tennant version of Macbeth freely available on BBC Sounds (something BBC does not make enough of). That decision proved to be good and I absolutely loved Macbeth at Dock X.

Due to its obvious popularity the Tennant/Jumbo version returned to the stage and while I was more tempted this time, it being several months since I had seen a Macbeth, the pricing put me off what was not an urgent see.

Then it was broadcast in cinemas and paying just £20 was a lot more tempting than paying, say, £160 for a much worse view in a much less comfortable seat.

I have not yet found a regular pre-theatre place to eat in Barnes and on this evening I ended up having a plant-based burger in Coach and Horses which did the job.

From the start this was a radical version of Macbeth, staged in the round with a plain white stage and no props. The perimeter was black and in there lurked some of the cast, dressed in black, who provided off-stage voices. This included the three witches who we never saw.

The audience were wearing headphones and I never worked out why.

The final technology was the actors' microphones, an unexpected technology given the small size of the theatre. They were small and discrete and while they would have been hardly noticeable to the theatre audience they were very obvious to us watching in cinemas due to the many close-ups.

This was also a slightly abridged version running for about 90 minutes whereas the radio plays are almost 120 minutes. There is a lot of verbiage in Shakespeare so it is easy to cut stuff without impacting the story but while the text is unnecessary it is poetic and I find it hard to believe that it ever makes sense to ever cut any of it. And, rarely, the cuts here were large enough for even me to notice when some of it had gone.

All that said this was still a might fine production of a mighty fine play. The simplicity of the staging and the good lead performers, as at Dock X, allowed the play the space it needed to shine.

Macbeth at Dock X

I have seen Macbeth numerous times and there has to be a pretty good reason to drag me out to see another version, and this production did that. Clearly Ralph Fiennes is a big attraction and I was also very tempted by the prospect of a staging in a performance space rather than a traditional theatre.

This was Julia's birthday treat so we pushed the boat out, quite a long way, and paid £85 each for our seats.

Dock X is in Canada Water which was convenient enough to get to (via dinner at Culture Grub by Waterloo) and a little difficult to find, we had to ask.

The venue was basic with bare concrete floors and simple seating in the auditorium. The stage was simple and raised and I had an excellent view of the whole stage ftom a corner position. I may have read my own biases into this but it looked more like an event audience than a theatre audience to me, e.g. it was much younger than I am used to for Shakespeare.

I was expecting the staging to do more than it did as the uniqueness of the production was billed as a key feature whereas I found it all very obvious. Indeed, productions like the one at National Theatre with Rory Kinnear in 2018 were much more experimental.

Essentially this was a standard production of Macbeth disguised as something more interesting.

Enough with the bad news, the production was probably the best Macbeth I have ever seen thanks to the production letting the words of Shakespeare do all the heavy lifting and to stellar performances by the two leads who gave those words the time and the space to flourish.

Macbeth at The Cockpit

I was looking for a play to take my sister to on one of her visits up from Dorset and most of my more visited theatres either had things that I did not want to see on or I did want to see them so I had already booked for another day. The Cockpit is on my list of regularly visited places and when I saw that they were doing Macbeth the deal was done, who does not like the Scottish Play?!

It also set the foundation for the afternoon and evening which started with a walk around Bedford Park in Chiswick (we broke the journey in to London at Turnham Green station) and was followed by a curry at Lahori Church Street, just across the road from the theatre.

As usual I had done limited (at best) research beforehand so it was a surprise to find that the cast was all female, which was the second time that week following on from Pride & Prejudice* (*sort of).

The play otherwise was actually more conventional that I suspected. It ran for just over two hours so if it was abridged at all then it was minor.

Knowing the story of Macbeth fairly well helped as, due to being set during continuous wars, most of the actors wore battle fatigues (Lady Macbeth was the prominent exception) which made them a little hard to tell apart; Banquo was the one with red hair.

These were actors in training so some allowance could be made but apart from one who spoke a little too quickly at times for my taste I had no problems with their performances and was fairly impressed overall. And I remembered that there was a production of King Lear at National Theatre where some of the actors were very hard to understand.

The production of Macbeth thrived on the gruesome story and Shakespeare's poetic language, which were enough, but it lacked the depth of other productions, which is not surprising.

I enjoyed this Macbeth and though my sister was less enthused it was still a good night out.

Macbeth at RSC Stratford-upon-Avon was amazing

There is probably some sort of limit to the number of times I can watch Macbeth but I have not got there yet.

There were some obvious reasons for wanting to see this version. I had wanted to see a production at RSC Stratford-upon-Avon for some time, this production featured Christopher Eccleston and, judging by the posters, it was a modern take on the classical story.

It was also our wedding anniversary and we used this as an excuse to eat at the RSC Rooftop Restaurant beforehand and to begin the meal with a champagne cocktail. It was a lovely start to the evening.

The theatre surprised me a little. I knew that it had been substantially remodelled in recent years and I was expecting something like National Theatre but what I found was more like Globe Theatre (without the pit). Unexpected but also understandable.

I had paid £50 for a seat on the side of the thrust stage and I was pleased with the view of the stage that I had.

The mood was set in the opening scene with the three witches played by young girls dressed for bedtime and carrying baby dolls. It was a striking image and one that recurred with the witches making several appearances during the play and not just when Shakespeare said they should. One of their roles was to help move the props!

Refreshingly the poster was a true reflection of what the production was like. Other theatres please take note (I'm thinking particularly of Almeida).

I am far from word perfect on Macbeth so I cannot be certain how much was changed but a little was and most was not. It was very much Shakespeare and very much Macbeth and also something a little different with things like the cleaner keeping track of the deaths.

Notably the ending was different. Or rather there was an epilogue where the witches returned and made another dark prediction. It was bit of a risk but I think that it worked. Bringing the witches back bookended the production nicely and the new prediction kept the story alive.

Macbeth at the Young Vic was a bold experiment that did not quite work

London theatre must be doing well as I have not had the opportunity to see The Scottish Play for many years.

The last time I remember seeing Macbeth was (at least) twenty years ago at the Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, though I did listen to the BBC Radio 3 version last year and I also saw the opera at Glyndebourne in 2010.

I was aware that the Young Vic were doing a modern take on Macbeth but I was a little weary and did not book it immediately. I loved some modern versions of Shakespeare, such as Hamlet and Lear, so this did appeal to me. The doubts came from my recent experience of the Young Vic were some productions, e.g. Streetcar named Desire, seemed unnecessarily complicated while others, e.g. Happy Days, were excellent.

In the end the deciding factor was work with a bit of help from fate. Work was not going well and rather than rant loudly to my boss I thought I would go to the theatre instead, something to calm me down. Macbeth was an option and there were a few single seats left for that evening's performance so I bought one, Downstairs D5 for £27.50.

The play did not start until 7:30pm so that have me plenty of time to walk down to Southwark from Kings Cross, have by usual Chinese style curry at Culture Grub and then get a pint of something brown and yet to drink at the Young Vic. You are allowed to take drinks in with you so I did, mostly because there were no seats in the bar and the theatre opened very early at 7pm.

The seat was a little to one side but I could see all the way down the funnel stage so I was OK. It did not hurt that the person in the seat in front of me did not turn up, the show was sold out but there were a few no-shows. I managed to get my usual shot from my seat despite the close attention of the staff eager to stop photography. The official photo above gives a better idea of what the stage looked like.

My first thought was of Richard III at the Old Vic which had a similar dark set with a series of doors along either side of the stage.

This was a strange Macbeth. It was a new version but I did not spot any changes in the text, nor would I expect to, until I checked afterwards for one specific thing (more on that later). I assume that several other pieces were cut out to make Macbeth more approachable and to make room for the dancing.

Yes, dancing. The first hint of this came when the three sisters first appeared and the prophecies came with modern dance moves, hands around the head and that sort of thing. They were also wearing body coloured body stockings which was another departure from the norm.

There was much more dancing later on especially in a ball scene that involved everybody and was quite fun. Less relevant were the duets between Macbeth's henchmen, their dancing was good but I just could not see the point of it.

The sound and lighting were far more successful in defining the mood and I loved the way that they varied, especially the volume with moments of loud music contrasting against soft speech.

The play is called Macbeth but I think that Lady Macbeth is the main character as she is the one who urges him on when the early doubts come and once that first fateful step is made he is doomed. This Lady Macbeth, Anna Maxwell Martin, was suitably scary not least because she looked like a primary school teacher. She led the rest of the cast well and they followed her admirably with no weaknesses and plenty of strengths.

The staging was light. All the doors were used frequently, the final section slid sideways a few times to show us other rooms and the central section lifted to become a table. What the staging did it did well enough but I missed what it did not do, e.g. there was no visual hint of Great Birnam Wood.

Surprisingly the ending fell a little flat. I heard other people say that on the way out so I checked the play text and saw that the closing speech had been chopped. I have no idea why and the absence of this epilogue made the ending rather abrupt.

My first reaction was, that despite the blunt ending, it was an exciting and thrilling experience, as you would expect Macbeth to be, and I was even considering going to see it again. On reflection, and I like to reflect on things, many of thrills came from the music and dancing and they were somewhat ephemeral, like cream cakes, and the sugar rush was short-lived. The core of the play was still one of Shakespeare's best plays but I was not convinced that the additional elements added anything to the tragedy.

Macbeth was fun, a lot of fun, and I am happy with that even if there was not enough in there to tempt me back for more.