Two-hander production of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth by Out of Chaos an unsettling and inventive 80 minutes of drama

Macbeth

at Oxford Playhouse

from Tuesday, April 2, to Thursday, May 1

Review by JON LEWIS

WHEN shall we two meet again?

Mike Tweddle’s minimalist two-hander production of Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth for Out of Chaos theatre company is an unsettling and inventive 80 minutes of drama.

Each time actors Hannah Barrie and Paul O’Mahony introduce or switch characters, they begin sentences with ‘enter’ then the character’s name, a helpful device to follow the plot.

Tweddle sets a furious pace. The actors scurry across the stage, about turn abruptly or just appear out of the darkness when new characters speak.

Macbeth and Lady Macbeth are affectionate towards each other, but cynical towards others.

Barrie suggests Lady Macbeth’s pain at the loss of a child, her tone bitter. She lacks the milk of human kindness after this personal tragedy.

As Banquo, Barrie a adopts a north-eastern accent full of bonhomie. Banquo is naïve, taken in first by the witches, then by Macbeth when he repeatedly asks him whether his young son Fleance will be by his side. As Banquo’s ghost, she droops an arm, part zombie, part ghast.

There’s much audience involvement. House lights come on for people reading hand-written cue cards to play messengers to the Macbeths.

Macbeth joins theatregoers in the stalls to comment on the action, and most dramatically, we play the party faithful at Macbeth’s fateful dinner party. We are citizen witnesses to Macbeth’s mental decline and paranoia after the murders of Duncan and Banquo.

Ashley Bale’s sharply pinpointed lighting design provides arresting visual landscapes. Sculpted triangles of light carve out spaces on stage. A large backcloth changes colour according to location.

Late on in the play, an eerie blue spotlight is focussed solely on Macbeth’s bald head, making him appear as grotesque as Nosferatu, the Vampyr. It’s stunningly effective.

The production also has a typically inventive and unsettling score and sound design from regular Creation Theatre Company sonic whizzkid Matt Eaton.

Eaton is superb at developing an ever-increasing sense of dread as Macbeth wades deeper into bloody tyranny.

Immy Howard’s costumes are cleverly multifunctional so that they work with whatever characters Barrie and O’Mahony are playing.

It will be interesting to see what Tweddle next brings to the Playhouse stage.