Brighton Year-Round 2024
Macbeth
Out of Chaos in Partnership with ATG Creative Learning
Genre: Adaptation, Classical and Shakespeare, Drama, Mainstream Theatre, Theatre, Tragedy
Venue: Theatre Royal Brighton
Festival: Brighton Year-Round
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 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 were held rapt.
It’s 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’s this production masquerades as entry level that’ll vault your ambition for more. But you’ll never see anything quite like it again.
Director Mike Tweddle, Lighting designer Ashley Bale, Sound designer Matt Eaton, Designer Imogen Howard, Associate Director Sally Wippman, Technical Stage Manager Will Hayman
Touring again April 9th
Review
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 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.
Performed by Hannah Barrie and Paul O’Mahony against a blasted stage, it’s a thing of lights. Designer Imogen Howard brings an uncluttered, minimal but idiomatic machine for epic the actors revel in.
Barrie plays Banquo, Lady Macbeth and MacDuff primarily. O’Mahony draws the arc of Macbeth across his renditions of Ross (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, and 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, and ad-libbing minimally.
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, directed to speak a particular word or phrase by being shown it on a large card plucked from a pocket. Some are quicker on the uptake, and on this occasion O’Mahony enjoyed a comical moment when a group of people, including adults, hesitated over “ten thousand”.
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, armoured in his triumphalism, and 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. 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, 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, sometimes deleted these days, has gone for good reason in a show lasting just on 85 minutes. 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 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 quite be called on – though sometimes they are and the actors are often as affecting as in any full-scale production.
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. Every inflection and difference is blocked, almost choreographed, with an astonishing economy of gesture and means – mainly lighting.
It’s 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.
