Macbeth
- touring
Playwright - Shakespeare
Director - Suzanne Loftus
Designer - Alison Brown
Company - Cutting Edge Theatre Company
Venues - See tours or
end of review
Run time - 2hr 15 mins no interval, take something comfortable to sit
on
Reviewer - Thelma Good
Touring to castles and cathedrals this Macbeth is an intelligent and
impassioned production of the Scottish Play. Christopher Duffy
makes a fine Macbeth, sensual and vigorous, a natural leader of men
and clearly ardent lover of his wife. Shona McIntosh is a Lady
Macbeth who chills as she leads her husband into ensuring the Weird
Sisters' prophecies come true. As with all the cast these are performances
of depth and complexity where terrible things unfold in a 2 and a quarter
hour frightening fall from order into chaos where no one is safe.
And what Weird Sisters
they are as they change shape and talk from their three heads. These
conjoined triplets designed by Christopher Duffy, appear at times during
the play when Macbeth deliberates with his increasingly warping conscience,
fixing the audience with his distorting eyes as he piles false reasoning
on to false reasoning. Increasingly we the audience see what he sees,
the dagger, Banquo's ghost at the feast and the apparitions appearing
with the witches in Act 4.
Mark Jopling's MacDuff breaks the heart as he tries to take in
the destruction of all his family, Malcolm Hamilton's Malcolm
is moving in his self knowledge of his moral frailty, Paul Rush
is an Irish Doctor who knows his physick and Graeme Kerr delivers
the Porter's speech with all the wayward logic of one frequently pissed.
Charlotte Duffy, Esther Forman and Rebekah Hieronymus are
vivid in their various roles as Lady MacDuff and her daughter, young
Fleance and Lady Macbeth's Gentlewoman.
This production with a skilfully edited text, Alison Brown's superb
and richly embroidered costumes, has 9 well cast actors, most playing
more than one role. The whole cast speak Shakespeare's Elizabethan language
as if it were their native tongue making it easy to follow. Take something
comfortable to sit on and warm to wear and enjoy theatre which is not
a pale shadow but thrives against the backdrop of historic buildings
with real turbulent pasts .
© Thelma Good 28 June 2001
Shona MacIntosh as Lady MacBeth and Christopher Duffy as Macbeth
© Julie Nicholson June 2001
Macbeth - Cutting Edge Theatre Company
Shakespeare's Scottish play in Scottish historic surroundings Tickets
from 0131 473 2000 unless otherwise.
29 June at 7:30pm St Andrew's Castle
30 June at 8pm Stirling Castle ( Great Hall)
1 July at 8pm Stirling Castle (Queen Anne Gardens)
5 July at 7:30pm Glasgow Cathedral
6 July at 7:30pm Caerlaverock Castle Dumfries and Galloway
8 July at 7:30pm Dryburgh Abbey Borders
13 July at 8pm Edinburgh Castle
14 July at 8pm Edinburgh Castle (Great Hall)
15 July at 8pmEdinburgh Castle (Crown Square)
20 July at 7:30pm< Linlithgow Place
21 July at 7:30pm Elgin Cathedral
22 & 23 July at 7:30pm Cawdor Castle Highlands 01667
404615
26 & 27 July at 7:30pm Scone Place Tayside 01738 552300
8 - 11 August Falkland Place Fife 01337 857397
16 August Carberry Tower East Lothian 0131 665 3135
25 August Kinnard Castle Brechin 01674 810240
End of tour