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Macbeth

The Playhouse, Edinburgh

Four stars

 

A big blood red spotlight engulfs the stage as an eerie underscore plays while the lights go down on this trimmed down version of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. Arguably the bard’s best-known saga has been seen in many forms over the last few centuries. His is tale of doomed ambition and men who would be king probably hasn’t been seen that often with such rapid fire brevity as this new version by the Hove based Out of Chaos company. Perhaps with latter day low attention span in mind concerning this set text friendly epic, director Mike Tweddle here oversees a version featuring just two actors who manage to fast forward through the Macbeths rise and fall in a speedy eighty minutes. 

 

Hannah Barrie and Paul O’Mahoney may be centre-stage much of the time as the fortune hunting Macbeths, but they also double up as a full supporting cast of assorted monarchs, thanes and soldiers in arms without missing a beat. They also do a turn as the weird sisters who first give Macbeth the ideas above his station that drive him and his social climbing spouse to murder. 

 

Such elaborate multi tasking is achieved by having Barrie and O’Mahoney announce each character as they enter and exit in a way that resembles the sort of old school banquet that rather handily happen twice in the play. The first is hosted by the about to be bumped off Duncan, while the second shindig marks Macbeth’s coronation just before he loses the plot. 

 

There are points as well that see Barrie and O’Mahoney engage directly with their young audience, as the lights go up several times as some are singled out as messengers and shown prompt cards to deliver their crucial line. There is fun to be had as well with Barrie’s rendition of a hungover Porter after a night carousing with the boys. 

 

Key to the production as well is Ashley Bale’s multi-coloured lighting which creates entire worlds on an otherwise bare stage shared in this matinee performance with the set for Kinks musical Sunny Afternoon, running at the Playhouse this week. If this initially gives the impression that an off duty 1960s beat group has left their instruments lying around, such fancies are quickly dispelled by the electronically treated voices for the witches. 

 

As a primer for the full play, Tweddle, Barrie and O’Mahoney manage to remain remarkably faithful to the original without seeming to miss out much at all while investing it with a fresh clarity. For those perhaps seeing Shakespeare’s work for the first time, this becomes a potential gateway to an even bigger world beyond. All hail. 


The Herald, May 9th 2026

 

Ends 

 

 

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