English Touring Theatre’s Macbeth is a thoroughly modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic. The evening opens with Lady Macbeth accepting a video call from her husband announcing his victory and imminent arrival with King Duncan. Lady M awaits the returning party in her contemporary designer home: a 2-storey, curved, horseshoe-shaped wall of glass and wood veneer hugging backstage. While she awaits the victorious party, she pulls on her vape and casually sits with a breast pump, attached quietly humming and doing its job.
Use of mixed media and input from projection designer Will Duke is a large part of this production. Images of witches, battlegrounds and eery dreams are projected onto the first-floor wall of smooth veneer which stretches and twists around the back of the stage. Basia Binkowska’s set is completed with a modern American-style fridge with an ominous rack of knives stuck to the front throughout the evening. A shower curtain backdrop on a side room channels Psycho and the bloody knife murders the movie and this play are famous for.
Director Richard Twyman has introduced many fresh innovations in this adaptation. Malcolm is often walking around set with a handheld camera projecting onto the first floor veneer screen; there are dinner parties; karaoke before the battle; bagpipes; even party poppers. So much has been brought in, but so much is then squandered or becomes a distraction rather than enhancing the story.
At first, the camera zooms in on faces or discrete conversations, which magnifies the sinister plots ahead, but then gets left on the floor capturing images of shoes on the large screen. Audience members are invited to a dinner party over a haggis, and then returned to their seats with little purpose. It was great to have the bagpipes played on set, but these moments could be drawn out. The breast pump hints at Lady Macbeth's expectations from motherhood and the dynasty they hope to found, but it is not referred to again. The introduction of karaoke bonding sessions with the soldiers was intriguing, but Malcolm’s rendition of a 1970s song by Baccara accompanied by a live projection from an old Top of the Pops defies explanation.
Having thrown so much at the evening, some things do stick successfully. Twyman certainly keeps us engaged and plays with our expectations. He avoids the clichés of hags and boiling pots, turns things upside down and instead opts to have the witches' voices channelled through the Macbeths at the ghostly dinner party, which is intriguing. The descent into madness of the couple and the effects of the moral corruption on Scotland’s civil order and society are well played out by the cast. As too are the hugely visceral fight and murder scenes—most particularly the hand-to-hand combat and murder of children—supported by some very uncomfortable (for all the right reasons) sound effects.
Laura Elsworthy owns the role of Lady Macbeth. The sexual chemistry (helped by some spectacular gowns) and hold over her husband, played by Mike Noble, is palpable. Lady M prowls the stage for blood spots using a UV torch—an ideal example of when adopting modern-world references worked well. Noble and his supporting Thanes are dressed in quilted battledress of padded combat trousers and jackets or leather kilts. The intensity of their relationships from battlefield camaraderie descending into outright bloodthirst for revenge is nerve-racking.
We experience the turmoil and turbulence caused by the Mabeths' treachery, but often the intensity leaks away with the random and distracting innovations which are not built on—although these sometimes gave a moment of humorous relief from the intensity. It is a curious and innovative approach and a bold attempt at the contemporary which demands attention, but the innovations often fall short.