Macbeth Review – Just an Ordinary Couple Crazy with Toxic Power | stage

For a play that ends bloodily, Macbeth begins like an improvisation. It is a tragedy of opportunism, a moment of hubris spiraling out of control. For a while, things could go either way.

This comes in this theatrical production, directed by Mark Babic in a triple co-production with Bolton Octagon and Derby Theatre. A modern soldier with camouflage colors and an automatic weapon, Macbeth steps forward from the battlefield. Played by Oliver Alvin Wilson, he is as strong as his country needs him to be: serious-minded and professional, but not selfish.

The idea that he could be more than just an ordinary fighter enters her like poison. It has been predicted to him by witches—eccentrics who mix and match somewhere between rough sleepers and zombies—that the prospect of kingship seems strange and uncomfortable. The taste of ambition is new to him. He swings in one direction or another, and the thirst for power is not bound to become his defining characteristic. Then it takes root.

It’s the same with Joe Moseley as Lady Macbeth. Shown in a maroon jacket and blue opal necklace, she enjoys the suburban plains, an ordinary woman who thinks on her feet. Like her husband, she comes and goes. As the two hatch a murder plot, they alternately cajole and cajole, ambiguous one moment, certain the next. They are as bad – and good – as each other. They are well matched.

Far from being born tyrants, these Macbeths are an ordinary couple who take their chances. The banquet scene looks less like a formal dinner than a light dinner in a stables apartment, with jazz music in the hall. This can happen to anyone.

If Lady Macbeth’s sudden madness has any justification (as always, it is a bit strange), it is that she has gone out of her way. She becomes nervous at any unwanted sound, and she is not as hard-hearted as she likes to pretend. Blowing kids’ brains out is a lot of bravado.

Performed on a rusty warehouse set designed by Rachel Canning, this GCSE-compliant production is straightforward. If the pulse isn’t racing, he presents in Alvin Wilson a pensive and contemplative Macbeth whose good sense is overtaken by seething rage.