Macbeth can be the most problematic of Shakespeare’s tragedies.  So many productions have floundered that we wonder whether there is some truth in the many superstitions that surround the Scottish play.  There was Peter O’Toole’s Macbeth for the Old Vic way back when the blow up black plastic bouncy castle set moved comically. 

Yaël Farber manages the unexpected, exciting direction which brings new insights to well known works.  In recent years in London from her we have had The Crucible at the Old Vic and Les Blancs at the National.

The unexpected is the running time of this Macbeth, usually coming in at less than two hours twenty minutes, here at just over three hours and almost equalled by the longest productions of Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe. 

What Yaël Farber has constructed is a Macbeth full of action and visual, visceral excitement. Still moments are rare as there is almost always something to watch.  Along with the audience are the three Weird Sisters (Diane Fletcher, Valerie Lilley and Maureen Hibbert) who watch from the back of the smoky stage throughout the play when they are not speaking their ominously accurate predictions.  The programme explains that the histories of the Wyrd sisters “are a reformed patchwork of myths and narratives…. who hold all destinies in their hands.”

It is always debatable to me what would have happened if Macbeth (James McArdle) had not met these three witches and the first prediction of Thane of Cawdor had not come true.  They do have a lot to answer for.  Of course not every director has an actor, Saoirse Ronan, to play Lady Macbeth who has an illustrious acting career going back to when she was 13 and now with four nominations for an Academy Award.

A lone cello plays sombre music onstage using the lowest of notes, a tall standpipe drips water and King Duncan (William Gaunt) is seated in a wheelchair next to his oxygen cyclinder.  Someone empties a wheelbarrow full of boots, presumably gathered from the battlefield.  Helicopters hover above like hawks.  Smoke surrounds the witches who are clad in manly suits like power dressed female executives.  Macbeth and Banquo hear the predictions.  The messenger is dressed with a bucket of bloody gore and then he takes the news of the victory to Duncan and Macbeth is rewarded with Thaneship of Cawdor.

They are well balanced this Macbeth and his wife.  As she reads his letter there is sinister portentous music and he arrives before she can finish reading it.  Lady Macbeth’s “unsex me here” is very sexual and the avowal that she would smash the brains out of her suckling baby is icy cold hearted and indicating one who looks so beautiful but is a true psychopath. 

Duncan the king is murdered but why, when he doesn’t look as if he has long to live? A coronation of Lord and Lady Macbeth takes place without crowns.  Instead there are horns and a giant ram’s head in this primitive kingdom as symbols of power and authority.  The men wear black kilts with a swagger.  The murder of Banquo (Ross Anderson) follows, a horrific blood bath but his son Fleance (Jamie-Lee Martin/Henry Meredith) escapes.