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Brighton Year-Round 2025

Macbeth

Out of Chaos in Partnership with ATG Creative Learning

Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, Short Plays, Theatre, Tragedy

Venue: Theatre Royal Brighton

Festival:


Low Down

Hove-based Out of Chaos stop in on their national tour to bring a two-hander Macbeth directed by Mike Tweddle for two performances to Theatre Royal Brighton.

It’s an 80-minute evisceration of Scotland. And like Edmund Kean in Richard III, this is Macbeth by lightning. Literally. It’s still a phenomenal feat and even if you know Macbeth, it’s still a must-see for how a quintessence can be dusted off.

Review

They’re back. Hove-based Out of Chaos stop in on their national tour to bring a two-hander Macbeth directed by Mike Tweddle for two performances to Theatre Royal Brighton (the second and last is at 13.15 on Friday 24th). Curated by Jackie Alexander of ATG Creative Learning there it’s an admirable joint initiative.  In a week of New Venture Theatre’s Macbeth, we’re spoilt for choice too. That outsized six-hander; or this. Which is at least as exciting as their production last March.

It’s an 80-minute evisceration of Scotland and to an extent, text. There’s a visceral dark, and virtually nothing important has gone. You might say it’s still full of quotations. And like Edmund Kean in Richard III, this is Macbeth by lightning. Literally. And it’s an ideal fit for Out of Chaos’ Partnership with ATG Creative Learning, and the predominantly young audience, who again are held rapt.

This is the most exciting way commercial theatre can bring in future audiences to classical drama. It imports contemporary, even Brechtian moments to blow away fustian. Sleek, slicked down, above all theatrical, its laser timing is sheer spectacle. For those who take it in, it’s a dark joy forever.

Performed by Hannah Barrie and Paul O’Mahony against a blasted stage, it’s a thing of lights, including three verticals upstage. Designer Imogen Howard brings an uncluttered, minimal but idiomatic machine for epic the actors revel in.

Barrie plays Banquo, Lady Macbeth, Ross and MacDuff primarily. O’Mahony draws the arc of Macbeth across his renditions of Ross too (most thanes venturi’d into him, neatly rendered a composite) and Malcolm. In timeless fashion O’Mahony’s in black, his tunic belted, and Barrie the same but in brown, suggesting characters with more warmth.

Barrie in particular revels in Banquo’s humanity, but her finest moment is as Macduff crushed and lamenting the murder of his whole family. It’s a touchstone for affect in this play; Barrie scorches the moment with grief.

Though we see the actors perform the couple, they’re often multi-roling within scenes, announcing brief stage directions, announcing “exit Ross” to clarify who’s in, who’s out, ad-libbing minimally. There’s a warmth and passion with the Macbeths together, underscoring the strange fact that Harold Bloom found them “the happiest married couple in Shakespeare.”

Occasionally when one’s offstage the actor plays two roles turning round on themselves (made famous by the riotous Thirty-Nine Steps). It’s extremely tight, conveyed in minimal gesture. One memorable moment for example has both actors face downstage as Macbeth and Banquo on the heath; and one then the other turn their backs as a pronouncing witch.

There’s also a fourth-wall engagement with young audience. Last year too some were directed to speak a particular word or phrase by being shown it on a large card plucked from a pocket; and the “ten thousand” soldiers from Birnam Wood is always a repeat gag. This year, from the Circle, it was possible to watch how lighting falls on a hapless adult, so O’Mahony gestures to them.

Ripeness is all, and there’s air-drawn daggers of time enough – though this is breakneck there’s enough beats or pauses to let the tragedy seep back in. Barrie gives every mercurial feeling and thought an utterance speeding over her face and voice. She particularly gradates the level of pathos, or quick-wittedness as Lady Macbeth seeks to placate guests.

O’Mahony revels in Ross’s humanity as opposed to the chilly Malcolm. The latter holds himself even more stiffly, armoured in his triumphalism. Then there’s the full metal jacket soul of Macbeth himself. Here he moves from the camaraderie he enjoys with Banquo to the bleak “Tomorrow and tomorrow” speech with its nihilism running at the speed of dark.

All of this though has to be accomplished by semaphore, every gesture followed. Lighting designer Ashley Bale forks lightnings, sparing on actual lightning-effects but spectral green glows, the full glare of sun, rooky woods and momentary gleams of witches, or Banquo at the blazing feast with a sudden verdegris cast, sicklied over Barrie. A moment lattices light over Malcolm as he speaks the last lines. There’s gulphs, depths with an eeriness of the relatively large space, and a first-class tracking of text, so every switch of mood or character is followed with utmost clarity.

Sound designer Matt Eaton supplies the uncanny world too: including huge crashes on doors and the noise of battle. We’re in the post-Donmar earphones-supplied Macbeth of last year, and people have always been used to gnawing sonics in this play, not least the Wanamaker’s 2018 production, with the inner auditorium’s shell racked with knockings. That’s almost the case here.

There’s omissions. The porter scene, frequently deleted these days, has gone for good reason in a show lasting just on 85 minutes this time. More painfully omitted we have Ross warning Lady Macduff but nothing else: the hideous murder’s reported by jump-cut to Macduff. There’s a removal of Seward and son, alluded to last year by O’Mahony in the post-show Q&A. Again, one of those moments Shakespeare added to show both the cost of war, and patriotic English agency: both aren’t essential to this telling.

If there’s a loss at all it’s that you can’t immerse yourself in the full tragedy and harrow up the soul in 80 minutes. The journey’s too short and the deepest reserves of acting can’t be called on – though just sometimes they are: here the actors are as affecting as in any full-scale production. Some characterising works particularly well. A few of Barrie’s are given amplitude in this production. Elsewhere there’s a palpable scorch of clarity, slickness even, though nothing is short of consummate.

That’s to judge it though by the greatest productions; and this is special in a very different way. It’s the most lucid and brilliantly illumined Macbeth I’ve seen – since last year! Again, every inflection and difference is blocked, almost choreographed, with an astonishing economy of gesture and means – mainly lighting. Seeing it again reminds you of the bleak blues, the verdant greens of Birnam Wood.

It’s still a phenomenal feat and even if you know Macbeth, it’s still a must-see for how a quintessence can be dusted off. And if you don’t know Shakespeare this production masquerades as entry level that’ll vault your ambition for more. But you’ll never see anything quite like it again.  Till, I hope, another Out of Chaos next year.

 

 

Director Mike Tweddle, Lighting Designer Ashley Bale, Sound Designer Matt Eaton, Designer Imogen Howard, Technical Stage Manager and Relighter Will Hayman, Sound Operator Chris Humphries, Associate Director Sally Wippman. Theatre Royal ATG Creative Learning Manager Jackie Alexander.

Published