Theatre Review: Macbeth - with David Tennant and Cush Jumbo

Would you like to spend two hours with David Tennant whispering in your ears? You'd be a fool to say no!

The stage is bare, the costumes are monochrome, Pepper's Ghost serves as a backdrop, the audience wears headphones. Is this style over substance? Almost.

So let's talk about the schtick. Every actor is wearing a microphone which allows their merest whisper to be picked up. An impressive audio mix is created, with ravens flying o'erhead, along with other non-diegetic sounds. The music is played live for the most part and is also perfectly incorporated into the world. Are we listening to a live-action radio play? It feels like it at times. I'll admit, I occasionally slipped the headphones off so I could hear the actors raw.

But it works. There are a few giggles from the audience at the start as "When shall we three meet again?" sidles into our ears, and then we all just accept that we're surrounded by sound. It becomes an intimate production full of whispered oaths and subtle inflections. Is this what Shakespeare was like when performed in court far away from the rabble?

Tennant plays a Macbeth riddled with PTSD from the battlefield, equally seduced and repelled by his abominable wife. Jumbo drips poison in his ears and, spookily, into ours.

Obviously the whole cast is magnificent (at West End prices, you'd hope so!) with Jatinder Singh Randhawa stealing the show as the Porter. His performance perfectly shows the power of comic relief after a bloody murder. He smashes the tension to smithereens, indulges the audience, brings us into his lunatic world, and then serves us up raw for other performers.

The whole thing is stunning and powerful. The cast are kinetic, bouncing and twitching with energy, the spartan set and costuming means we can concentrate on the performances, and the tension is perfectly built up.

From a production perspective, the technology is brilliantly integrated - although perhaps open-ear headphones would have allowed a greater mix between performed audio and piped audio? (There are also many accessibility options available.) Similarly, the use of Pepper's Illusion is superb - giving a literal ghostly quality to some of the performers (although not necessarily the ones you expect).

If you want traditional Shakespeare, you might find it a bit gimmicky. If you've seen Macbeth a dozen times and are longing for a new way to experience it, this is perfect.

The play has been cut down to a tight 1 hour 50 minutes with no interval. So expect hefty queues at the loos before and after (the Pinter at least has loos on every floor, distributing the load somewhat).

Shakerace

How does this add to the study of #ShakeRace? Each time you see Shakespeare performed, the nature of the cast transforms your understanding of the text.

As befits a modern production, the cast are not all-white. What they are, however, is all Scottish.

Well, all except one.

Lady Macbeth.

There stands Cush Jumbo, dressed in pure white, with a cut-glass English accent to mark her as different from the others members of court. Is it her perfidious English nature that drives the pair's murderous ambition? Can we ever really trust an Englishwoman so close to the crown? Perhaps the coming of ten-thousand of her kinsman, ready to slaughter, is what causes her to die?

The character of Fluellen from Henry V is a Welshman who is treated as an immigrant to London - so would the original audience of this play have treated Scots as foreigners? If so, how would they feel about seeing a pure Englishwoman married to savage Macbeth?

At the time the play was first performed, England was ruled by King James (VI Scotland and I England) who had married a Danish lass. Were his subjects worried about her foreign influence?

Are Tennant and Jumbo a modern power-couple in a post-race world, busting stereotypes, and liberating themselves from the confines of traditionalism? Or are they stuck in a mixed marriage which was doomed from the start?

The interpretation is, of course, up to you.