Triple, triple toil and trouble. This August, the RSC’s Macbeth; later this month David Tennant and Cush Jumbo at the Donmar. Meanwhile, Simon Godwin’s production of Macbeth comes with alluring casting: Ralph Fiennes and Indira Varma are the magnetic murderers. It also makes a bid for a wider audience, being staged in a series of converted warehouses, in Liverpool, London, Edinburgh and Washington DC.
This is not site-specific in the way that Kenneth Branagh’s production was 10 years ago: performed in a deconsecrated Manchester church (with candles snuffed out throughout the evening), theme and setting chimed completely. Yet it envelops its audience in the play’s disruptive discomforts. No plush. A chill in the air: spectators kept their coats on. Sounds uncushioned in a metallic space. The auditorium is approached through an antechamber of destruction. Frankie Bradshaw – rising star of stage design – has created a wasteland of toppled telegraph poles, chunks of masonry, a half-blasted tree, a burned-out car. Smoke curls up; embers glow, finely lit by Jai Morjaria. Among the far-off crash and boom of explosions, the thin tinkle of a musical box.
